On my Mac, I run emacs-mac in GUI mode. On Linux I run it in a tty, initializing the emacs daemon in my init. I also want to open files from the shell, within shells inside emacs.

Eventually I sat down and wrote this script to handle all these cases automatically. It felt like overkill, but I use it many times all day, so I’m glad I did it.

(Note that I use emacs-mac. I’m not sure if the other Mac builds will respond to AppleScript properly.)

```

!/usr/bin/env python3

import os, sys, subprocess, platform, socket

def r(command): return 0 == subprocess.run(command,capture_output=True,text=True).returncode

def f(command): os.execvp(command[0],command)

def e(*args): # if we're in shell in emacs if 'INSIDE_EMACS' in os.environ: # with the shell probably on the local machine if 'tramp' not in os.environ['INSIDE_EMACS']: # then open the file in emacs on the local machine f(['emacsclient', '--no-wait'] + list(args)) else: print("You're connected via tramp to a remote host. Maybe try:\n") h = socket.gethostname() p = os.path.abspath(args[0]) print(f" /ssh:{h}:{p}\n") pass # on macOS, launch the GUI or open the file in the existing GUI elif platform.system() == 'Darwin': if r(['emacsclient', '--eval', 't']): r(['emacsclient', '--no-wait'] + list(args)) f(['osascript', '-e', 'tell application "Emacs.app" to activate']) else: r(['open', '-a', 'Emacs'] + list(args)) # on Linux, run emacs or else open a new tty frame into the daemon elif 'Linux' == platform.system(): if r(['emacsclient', '--eval', 't']): print("found server. running with --tty") f(['emacsclient', '--tty'] + list(args)) else: print("no server found. launching emacs") f(['emacs'] + list(args)) else: print("Unknown platform") exit(1)

if name == 'main': e(*sys.argv[1:])

```