BASH - file selection by multiple patterns in zenity

Question

Im pretty new to zenity and bash. Im trying to make file selection window that will display only the ones with .ogg, .aac and .wav extension. I tried this, but it doesn't work.

option=`zenity --file-selection --file-filter=*.ogg | *.aac`

For one extension it's working as intented:

option=`zenity --file-selection --file-filter=*.ogg`

Zenity man provides information:

--file-filter=NAME | PATTERN1 PATTERN2
Sets a filename filter

I dont really understand how am I supposed to use it. Can someone show me some examples?

Azazel

I haven't zenity, so only guessing. So, try this: --file-filter="*.ogg|*.aac" – Counterpressure

Yeah, thansk for the effort :) This one gives only the ones that ends on .aac. – Azazel

Answer 1

Ok I found the solution, maybe someone will use it in the future:

zenity --file-selection --file-filter=""*.ogg" "*.wav" "*.aac""

Azazel

And indeed it is helpful in the future. Thanks! – Pastypat

Thanks for posting the answer, I don't think I would have figured that out on my own. But now that you pointed me in the right direction, I found how to do descriptions and multiple dropdown options too - hope you don't mind the edit :) – Monochromat

Those quotes are mostly unnecessary. Just use "*.ogg *.wav *.aac". – Incontrollable

It seems as if the quotes are interpreted by Bash and not zenity - this means that it works for you by luck because the files in the current directory are used as a filter. – Buke

Answer 2

Special bash symbols | and * needs escaping (backslash) or quoting (single or double), and you have succeeded with that. With single quotes the argument is passed literally to zenity.

Repeat the --file-filter option if you want more filter choices For example, you may want two filters "All files" and "Music files" in the file selection window:

zenity --file-selection --file-filter='Music files (ogg,wav,aac) | *.ogg *.wav *.aac' --file-filter='All files | *'

Westwardly

Until I saw this post, I had not tried multiple, separate --file-filter="Filetype | *.foo" flags. It hadn't even occurred to me! They should update their documentation. – Barstow

The updated documentation can be found in manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lunar/en/man1/zenity.1.html – Freemason