Subject: 24.0.92; run dired-do-async-shell-command on multiple files individually
From: "Roland Winkler" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:17:16 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Within dired, I want to run a shell command asynchronously on
multiple files individually. Say, most specifically I tried to
watch the postscript files foo.ps and bar.ps with gv.

So I mark foo.ps and bar.ps in the dired buffer and hit
& gv ?

In the buffer *Async Shell Command* this gives me the error message

/bin/bash: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
/bin/bash: -c: line 0: `gv foo.ps &;gv bar.ps'

I get the same error message with the command dired-do-shell-command using
! gv ? &

I am not the most experienced bash expert. But it seems that bash
doesn't like the combination `&;'. Note also that there is no `&'
for `gv bar.ps'.

In a tty
$ gv foo.ps & gv bar.ps &
works fine for me (giving me what I expect to get within dired).

Am I misunderstanding the docstrings of dired-do-shell-command and
dired-do-async-shell-command (which are a bit confusing for me
concerning how to run a shell command on multiple files) or is there
a bug in the code?

In GNU Emacs 24.0.92.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.20.1)
 of 2011-12-14 on regnitz
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10706000