Start Komodo Edit from Command Line on Mac

There are two ways to get Komodo to open files from the command line on the Mac. The first is to create an alias for the command 'komodo' that launches Komodo with any file you specify. That's how I did it when I first wrote this article, but there's another and probably better way.

The Mac has a command line utility called open. The open command will open any app, folder, or file in it's associated application. If double clicking on .php files already opens them with Komodo then running something like open myfile.php will do the same thing. No shortcuts or aliases needed and you can use this trick to open any file that you would typically double-click in Finder.

open myfile.php

If you don't already have .php files associated with Komodo you can right click on a .php file in Finder and select Get Info. Then, find the Open with section, set the drop-down to Komodo Edit 8 and click the Change All button to make all .php files open with Komodo. Now the open command will do the same.

If you still want to go ahead with creating a shortcut specifically to launch Komodo Edit on the command line, you can run the following command.

alias komodo='open -a "Komodo Edit 8"'

Notice that it used that magical open command we just talked about. It creates an alias to open the Komodo app though.

The best option is to add that line to your ~/.profile file so that it runs every time you open a terminal. I use Vi to edit that file and then past that line into it.

vi ~/.profile

Now you can start Komodo Edit from the command line either by entering komodo or by entering that followed by a filename you want to open.

komodo some_file.txt