Re: convert AS syntax to CLI
Re: convert AS syntax to CLI
- Subject: Re: convert AS syntax to CLI
- From: Justin Middleton <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:50:25 -0700
Jeremy,
The feasibility (and sensibility) of moving your AppleScripts
entirely over to shell scripts depends to a large extent upon what
you're doing. If your scripts are performing rather simple
operations, like moving around in the filesystem, reading/writing/
processing text files, or starting/stopping processes, then shell
scripts might make sense (and if they're startup/shutdown scripts for
always-running daemons, then SystemStarter scripts might be the way
to go). However, if your scripts are throwing a bunch of AppleEvents
around between apps, you'll want to stick with AppleScript for those
bits. And then of course, there's nothing wrong with a hybrid
solution... creating a library of shell-script wrappers of
AppleScript functionality (each of the wrappers calling AppleScripts
with osascript).
In other words, there are many ways to skin it, depending upon what
the particular "it" is. The example you provide would be easy to do
in bourne/bash.
If you're interested in shell programming, one of the books I highly
recommend is "Portable Shell Programming: An Extensive Collection of
Bourne Shell Examples" by Bruce Blinn (http://tinyurl.com/cc3bw).
This book does not cover bash specifics ("bash", the default shell on
OSX as of late, is the "Bourne Again SHell"), but some would say
you'd be better for it. The book emphasizes portable ways of
performing common tasks. Mine is well-dog-eared. Just about any
script you write in plain-old-Bourne will run in bash**.
For a bash specific book, O'Reilly's "Learning The bash Shell, 2nd
Ed." by Newham and Rosenblatt (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/
bash2/), has been recommended to me. I cannot vouch for that
particular title, but my experience with O'Reilly is that I can count
on them about 80% of the time.
Hope that helps. If you have questions on a specific script, feel
free to post it.
/j
** I'm fibbing, a little. bash does some annoying things in the
spirit of "helping."
On Sep 15, 2005, at 1:40 PM, Jeramey Valley wrote:
I'm finding that I need to get many of the functions I've used
AppleScript for to now work in a shell script. A lot of the tools
and the way I need to run them have to run in a shell script as I
can't call an application for the functions. Mainly it's during
login/out that this needs to do.
Question is: Does anyone have resources to recommend that would
help in "converting" the syntax from an AS to a shell script?
Things like comparing the contents of two folders and taking action
on the non-matching files in one of those folders. Pretty simple in
AS. I don't know how to do this in Terminal or a shell script. I'd
rather not do perl or some actual language.
For now I'm getting by with using osascript to call my
AppleScripts, which is very functional so far.
Any pointers appreciated.
--
Regards,
Jeramey Valley
email@hidden
Network Administrator
H. H. Dow High School
Midland Public Schools
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