Run opendesktop.org-style *.desktop files (usually located under ~/.local/share/applications) from the command-line. This is only a bare-bones omplementation. Useful on a Mac. See http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-1.0.html .

run_desktop.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

my $cmd;
my $path;

while (<>) {
    if (/^Exec=(.*)/) {
        $cmd = $1;
        $cmd =~ s{\\\\}{\\}g;
        $cmd =~ s{\\`}{`}g;
        $cmd =~ s{\\\$}{\$}g;
    }
    if (/^Path=(.*)/) {
        $path = $1;
    }
}

if ($cmd) {
    if ($path) {
        chdir($path);
    }
    system($cmd);
}