AppleScript in a Nutshell

Scripting the Script Editor

You can also use Script Editor as the target application for the Apple events sent from your script. If you are like me, you might want to begin your script in a more robust programmer’s editor, such as BBEdit. Once you are ready to test and compile the code, the following script in Example 2-4 copies the text from BBEdit, and then pastes it into a new Script Editor window. This applet is for demonstration purposes only and performs marginal error-trapping for the sake of brevity (it only checks to see if BBEdit has an open window). The applet has been developed under Mac OS 9 and uses the open for access, write, and close access scripting-additions commands from the Standard Additions. (Scripting additions are covered in Appendix A.) Presumably, a tweaked version of this script could run on OS X; however, BBEdit had not yet released an OS X version of its text editor at the time of this writing.

Example 2-4. An AppleScript That Moves Script Code into a Script Editor File

(* this variable will store the BBEdit text and is initialized to a string *) set allCode to "" (* this variable will store the path to the Desktop folder and is initialized to a string *) set deskPath to "" tell application "BBEdit 5.0" try activate set allCode to (window text of document 1) on error errMessage display dialog "Looks like BBEdit does not have any open windows" &¬ return & return & "Error: " & errMessage & return & return &¬ "Exiting applet" return -- this return statement ...