Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

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 of 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