"open with" command appears to only support one file at a time

[jchurchill]

I need to be able to send a command to another program to do something with files that I've selected. As a simplified example, consider that they need to be put together into a zip file and sent somewhere. The "open with" Applications dialog doesn't seem to support this. I can only invoke the command with one file at a time, which isn't useful in this case. If I have multiple files selected, the option disappears from the menu... UNLESS I have "multiple instances" selected. But then BC wants to run the command once for each file, not once for all files.

Is there a way around this to get a command with all of my selected files as arguments?

[Aaron]

Hello,

The Open With, with performed on multiple files, does not support passing them in as a large parameter list. Instead, as you've found, it triggers the command on each file individually.

Which archive type would you be attempting to send them all to with your custom Open With? If you select multiple files, then use the Copy To Folder command, type in a path that ends with ".zip", this will create the zip and put the selected files into it. Would this meet your needs?

[jchurchill]

Hello,

The Open With, with performed on multiple files, does not support passing them in as a large parameter list. Instead, as you've found, it triggers the command on each file individually.

Which archive type would you be attempting to send them all to with your custom Open With? If you select multiple files, then use the Copy To Folder command, type in a path that ends with ".zip", this will create the zip and put the selected files into it. Would this meet your needs?

Nope, that would just get me as far as creating a zip file, assuming I was on Windows. And that was just a simple example. I need to pass the filenames as sets to a custom application. It seems like a lot of thought went into the settings of that option pane (path delimiter, multiple in parallel, etc.), so I'm really surprised BC can't do this.