AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 25. Unix

Once upon a time, Apple's Mac OS operating system and the Unix operating system were two completely separate worlds, each with its own idea of what constituted "scripting." On Mac OS, there was AppleScript and the OSA. On Unix, there was the command line, shell scripting, and the various shell scripting languages such as Perl. Now, with Mac OS X, those two worlds are united; both kinds of "scripting" are present, and there is communication between them, in both directions. Thus, you can combine the power of Unix scripting with the power of AppleScript.

The way you call a Unix tool from AppleScript is with the do shell script scripting addition command. The way you call from Unix into AppleScript is with the osascript tool. This chapter discusses both, along with some examples; you'll see how Perl, curl, and AppleScript can work together to perform a web query, and you'll see Ruby, AppleScript, and Microsoft Excel joining forces to perform textual analysis and graph the results.

Do Shell Script

Your first step in getting acquainted with the do shell script scripting addition command should be to read Apple's excellent technical note documenting it (http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2065.html ).

The direct object of do shell script is a string representing the text you would type at the command-line prompt in the Terminal. Actually, that's not quite true, so do not imagine that you can blithely test a prospective do shell script command simply by typing it ...