08-01-2007
Silly newbie question on special characters!
Hello again Gurus,
Can someone please direct me to an online source that specifically explains what characters like [ ! # {} ] mean within if statements? or scripts in general, I have found information about the different letter options you can specify for an if statment, but I get really confused with the ! in front of a -f or particularly this if [ $# -lt 1 ] at the beginning of a script when there have been no variables set.
I've learned the basic purpose of an if statement and case statement sort of, but the special characters are somehow omitted from the sources I've been looking at.
Any source for dummies or idiots like myself would be great!
Thanks so much.
Charlie.
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LEARN ABOUT OSX
osascript
OSASCRIPT(1) BSD General Commands Manual OSASCRIPT(1)
NAME
osascript -- execute AppleScripts and other OSA language scripts
SYNOPSIS
osascript [-l language] [-s flags] [-e statement | programfile] [argument ...]
DESCRIPTION
osascript executes the given script. It was designed for use with AppleScript, but will work with any Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) lan-
guage. To get a list of the OSA languages installed on your system, use osalang(1). For documentation on AppleScript itself, see
<http://www.apple.com/applescript>.
osascript will look for the script in one of the following three places:
1. Specified line by line using -e switches on the command line.
2. Contained in the file specified by the first filename on the command line. This file may be plain text or a compiled script.
3. Passed in using standard input. This works only if there are no filename arguments; to pass arguments to a STDIN-read script, you must
explicitly specify ``-'' for the script name.
Any arguments following the script will be passed as a list of strings to the direct parameter of the ``run'' handler. For example:
a.scpt:
on run argv
return "hello, " & item 1 of argv & "."
end run
% osascript a.scpt world
hello, world.
The options are as follows:
-e statement
Enter one line of a script. If -e is given, osascript will not look for a filename in the argument list. Multiple -e options may be
given to build up a multi-line script. Because most scripts use characters that are special to many shell programs (e.g., AppleScript
uses single and double quote marks, ``('', ``)'', and ``*''), the statement will have to be correctly quoted and escaped to get it past
the shell intact.
-l language
Override the language for any plain text files. Normally, plain text files are compiled as AppleScript.
-s flags
Modify the output style. The flags argument is a string consisting of any of the modifier characters e, h, o, and s. Multiple modi-
fiers can be concatenated in the same string, and multiple -s options can be specified. The modifiers come in exclusive pairs; if con-
flicting modifiers are specified, the last one takes precedence. The meanings of the modifier characters are as follows:
h Print values in human-readable form (default).
s Print values in recompilable source form.
osascript normally prints its results in human-readable form: strings do not have quotes around them, characters are not escaped,
braces for lists and records are omitted, etc. This is generally more useful, but can introduce ambiguities. For example, the
lists '{"foo", "bar"}' and '{{"foo", {"bar"}}}' would both be displayed as 'foo, bar'. To see the results in an unambiguous form
that could be recompiled into the same value, use the s modifier.
e Print script errors to stderr (default).
o Print script errors to stdout.
osascript normally prints script errors to stderr, so downstream clients only see valid results. When running automated tests, how-
ever, using the o modifier lets you distinguish script errors, which you care about matching, from other diagnostic output, which
you don't.
SEE ALSO
osacompile(1), osalang(1)
HISTORY
osascript in Mac OS X 10.0 would translate '
' characters in the output to '
' and provided c and r modifiers for the -s option to change
this. osascript now always leaves the output alone; pipe through tr(1) if necessary.
Prior to Mac OS X 10.4, osascript did not allow passing arguments to the script.
Mac OS X June 10, 2003 Mac OS X