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Re: "do shell" vs. Plain old AppleScript nomenclature
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Re: "do shell" vs. Plain old AppleScript nomenclature

On 23 Jul 2004, at 09:58, D. Mahaffy wrote:
> Simply, why would I want to use "do shell script" as opposed to parsing
> out my request using AppleScript "lingo"? (Pardon my nomenclature, I'm
> a "novice" when it comes to scripting).

For the same reason you might want to use a hex wrench on a screw
instead of a flathead. Right tool for the job and all that.

> I've got a script that parses out the date and time that is "long" for
> what I'm needing (doing time-zone compensation, etc.). It seems that
> the main (positive) thing with shell scripting via A/S is brevity.
>
> But another poster (Andrew Oliver) said, essentially, why spawn extra
> shell process when you don't need to?

Depends on if spawning the shell script will save you time and make
your script faster.

> Here's a sample of getting time and date:

-- %I is 0 padded 12 hour clock, %M is minutes and %p is AM/PM
set HourMin to do shell script "date +%I%M%p"
set theHour to text 1 through 2 of HourMin as string
set theMinute to text 3 through 4 of HourMin as string
set amPM to text 5 through 6 of HourMin as string

-- We use the 0 pad for parsing purpses, but we don't want the 0
if first character of theHour is equal to "0" then
set theHour to character 2 of theHour
end if

set theTime to (theHour & ":" & theMinute & " " & amPM) as text
display dialog theTime

> With "do shell script" I gather that some of this can be shortened
> using the % commands, yes? Is there a reference of the commands for
> time/date - and HOW to write them? I find the script library commands,
> while useful for finding commands, is not useful for how to properly
> write them out (for newbies, at least).

`man date` will lead to `man strftime`


> Did find shell references on the web, but experimented with and without
> success. Date parsing was somewhat successful, but getting a time
> stamp of say: 4:23 PM was not.

date "+%l:%M %p"

--
Behind every great man there's a woman with a vibrator -- Hawkeye Pierce

[demime 0.98b removed an attachment of type application/pkcs7-signature which had a name of smime.p7s]
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References: 
 >set computer name (From: Andre Vink <email@hidden>)
 >"do shell" vs. Plain old AppleScript nomenclature (From: "D. Mahaffy" <email@hidden>)



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