How to change Xfce workspace name from command line?

Question

I need to change the name of a workspace on a remote machine. I've looked at the documentation for xfconf-query and I've managed to list the workspace names using

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_names

The result begins with

Value is an array with 13 items:

I also grep'd for a file that contained one of my workspace names and I found ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml but when I edit the file and change one of the workspace names, then open the workspaces gui, it still has the same old value. And yet, if I change the workspace name in the gui then open ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml - the workspace has been updated with the new workspace name.

I've done a lot of searching on this and nothing I can find tells me how to specify which item in the array I want to change - and what I want to change it to. If someone out there knows how to do this, could you just post an example like

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_names -o(ld) old_name -n(ew) new_name

Answer 1

I couldn't find a command line utility to do this specifically. Using xfconf-query the names for all workspaces must be specified since /general/workspace_names is an array as your output indicates. A Bash script may help with this.

$ cat xfwm4-set-workspace-name
#!/bin/bash

# usage: xfwm4-set-workspace-name [number name]...

_OLD_IFS=$IFS IFS=$'\n'
ws_count=$(xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_count)
ws_names=($(xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_names | tail -n+3))
IFS=$_OLD_IFS

declare -i ws_number

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    ws_number=$1
    shift

    if [ $ws_number -lt 1 -o $ws_number -gt $ws_count ]; then
        echo warning: invalid workspace number 2>/dev/null
        shift
        continue
    fi

    if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
        echo warning: no workspace name specified 2>/dev/null
        break
    fi

    ws_name=$1
    shift
    ws_names[$((ws_number - 1))]=$ws_name
done

declare -a xfconf_sets

for i in ${!ws_names[@]}; do
    xfconf_sets+=(-s "${ws_names[$i]}")
done

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_names "${xfconf_sets[@]}"
$ ./xfwm4-set-workspace-name 2 'ws two' 3 'workspace three'