Android programming question - fork/exec in Android?

Question

Is there a standard native Android content provider that will return data listing all of the apps currently installed on the cellphone. Something like open()/readdir() on a Linux bin directory.

Given that you know an app is installed on an Android cellphone, and you know that apps name, how do you launch that app from a completely different and unrelated app. You might not know which Intents/Broadcasts/URIs the app you want to launch is listening for. And not all Android apps are written to respond to Intent/URI broadcasts or requests....

Answer 1

The idea is that you don't care what apps are on the phone, you only care about what intents they are listening for. If you need to browse for a file what does it matter which file browser the person has installed? All you need to do is tell the OS that you want to pick a file and let the OS handle that.