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