I am trying to write a bash script that can be passed multiple folders, find(recursively) rar files and extract them. The problem is passing multiple selected folders to the script. The exec line of the service menu is:
Exec=konsole --hold --workdir %f -e searchforarchives.sh %U
Note: I am only using konsole for debugging, and will be running the final script from directly in the service menu, the script is in /usr/local/bin/ which shows up in my path.

The script itself looks like this:

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#!/bin/bash
searchextractrar() {
    input="${1}"
    echo "${input}"

    if ${input} -type f -name '*.part01.rar' -exec ark --batch --autodestination --autosubfolder '{}' '+' ';' ; then
        kdialog --passivepopup "Extracting ${file} complete." 60
    else if ${input} -type f -name '*.rar' -exec ark --batch --autodestination --autosubfolder '{}' '+' ';' ; then
        kdialog --passivepopup "Extracting ${file} complete." 60
    else
   kdialog --passivepopup --icon error "No archive found or failed to extract ${file}." 60
      return 1  Change to exit 1 to stop the script on first failure
      fi
   fi
}

for file in ${@} ; do
    searchextractrar ${file}
done

I have added an echo on line 4 to see what folders are passed to Konsole. If I select 1 folder, it echos back the path and handles extraction as it should. If I try to select 2 folders, and pass them to the script, I get no response from echo and simply launches a Konsole defaulting to ~/Documents.

How come %U is not passing multiple folders?

Is your script invoked at all? (ie. can you add test echo lines with fixed strings).

bcooksley wrote:Is your script invoked at all? (ie. can you add test echo lines with fixed strings).

Well I can't imagine why the script wouldn't be invoked but I suppose it is possible since konsole does't echo anything for ${input} if multiple folders are selected. If a single folder is selected, then it echos the folder name just fine.

As for the echo lines, I am not sure what you mean in this case?

I would suggest adding something like the following:

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echo "This is a test"

To see if your script is actually being executed or if something else is causing the script to not be invoked by Konsole (which sounds like it could be the case).

Ahh I thought you meant a more elaborate type of echo response. In this case I am not sure how I would provide an echo to see if the script fails to pass to konsole.

If you add the echo line into your script, then you should see it above the shell which gets launched in Konsole.
Another thing you could try doing is watching the content of ~/.xsession-errors when performing this to see if anything else relevant is output there.

bcooksley wrote:If you add the echo line into your script, then you should see it above the shell which gets launched in Konsole.
Another thing you could try doing is watching the content of ~/.xsession-errors when performing this to see if anything else relevant is output there.

Edit: The answer was in the op. I was using %f and %U in the .desktop file.