Name
osascript
Synopsis
osascript [options
] [files
]
Executes an OSA script from files
, or from standard input if files
isn’t specified.
Options
-
-e
command
Use
command
as a line of script to be compiled. You can use more than one -e option; each specifies a new line of script.-
-l
OSAlang
Use OSA language OSAlang instead of the default AppleScript. Use the osalang command (described previously) to get information on all the system’s OSA languages.
-
-s
options
Provide output as specified in
options
with one or more of these flags:- h
Human readable (default)
- s
Recompilable source
- e
Send errors to standard error (default)
- o
Send errors to standard output
Examples
To run a script that displays a dialog window from the Finder, first run osascript with no arguments, which allows you to enter the script into standard input:
$osascript
tell app "Finder"
activate
display dialog "Mac OS X Rules!"
end tell
Press Ctrl-D to send an EOF, at which point osascript executes the script and prints the value returned:
button returned:OK
Run with the -s s option, the output is better formatted for subsequent parsing:
$osascript -s s
tell app "Finder"
activate
display dialog "Mac OS X Rules!"
end tell
{button returned:"OK"} or argument/switch mismatch
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