Emacs: Open in Terminal 🚀

Here's a command to open the current file's directory in terminal.

put this in your Emacs Init File:

(defvar xah-fly-mswin-terminal
  "wt"
  "A string. Value should be one of: wt (for Windows Terminal) or pwsh (for PowerShell Core (cross-platform)) or powershell (for Microsoft PowerShell).")

(defun xah-open-in-terminal ()
  "Open the current dir in a new terminal window.
On Microsoft Windows, which terminal it starts depends on `xah-fly-mswin-terminal'.

URL `http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/emacs_open_in_terminal.html'
Version: 2020-11-21 2022-08-04 2023-03-01 2023-06-26"
  (interactive)
  (cond
   ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
    (cond
     ((string-equal xah-fly-mswin-terminal "wt") (shell-command (format "wt -d \"%s\"" default-directory)))
     ((string-equal xah-fly-mswin-terminal "pwsh") (shell-command (format "pwsh -Command Start-Process pwsh -WorkingDirectory '%s'" (shell-quote-argument default-directory))))
     ((string-equal xah-fly-mswin-terminal "powershell") (shell-command (format "powershell -Command Start-Process powershell -WorkingDirectory '%s'" (shell-quote-argument default-directory))))
     (t (error "Error 702919: value of `xah-fly-mswin-terminal' is not expected. Its value is %s" xah-fly-mswin-terminal))))
   ((eq system-type 'darwin)
    (shell-command (concat "open -a terminal " (shell-quote-argument (expand-file-name default-directory)))))
   ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
    (let ((process-connection-type nil)) (start-process "" nil "x-terminal-emulator" (concat "--working-directory=" default-directory))))
   ((eq system-type 'berkeley-unix)
    (let ((process-connection-type nil)) (start-process "" nil "x-terminal-emulator" (concat "--working-directory=" default-directory))))))

Note: emacs has many shells and terminal emulators. [see Emacs: Run Shell in Emacs] But sometimes, it is best to run some command in dedicated terminal app. e.g. compiling a large project, or running a non-standard shell command.