how to include an environment variable in the launcher?

Question

I was trying to make some scripts dynamic by including the environment variable $LOGNAME and even $HOME. but it don't seem to work when placed in a launcher.

I am trying to make code a bit more dynamic

/home/simon/Desktop/firefox_test.bash

I tried

$HOME/Desktop/firefox_test.bash 

and

/home/$LOGNAME/Desktop/firefox_test.html

but it don't seem to read the environment variables.

Answer 1

Starter commands usually aren't evaluated by a shell so environment variable don't get evaluated.

Use

 sh -c '$HOME/Desktop/firefox_test.bash'

or

 sh -c 'xdg-open /home/$LOGNAME/Desktop/firefox_test.html'

In the .desktop launcher file, you will then have this, for example, for the Exec line:

Exec=sh -c '$HOME/Desktop/firefox_test.bash'