macOS Apple Script Help, "do shell command"

Ohsnaptakethat · Mar 18, 2008

Hey all,

After moving to Leopard I have noticed that the Finder, and more importantly Spotlight have completely lost their usefulness to me. As a new sys admin I loved being able to type in some obscure plist I needed to edit into Spotlight and have show right up. But that was in Tiger and this is Leopard, now when I type in com.apple. anything I get Safari History items, and really random txt files that I really had no idea existed.

So instead I have been using terminal to do my dirty work. Using the
"find / | grep -i variable" command.

I would like to build a little Applescript that ran that command, but with the variable be something I type into a dialog box. And then just have it spit the results out.

I know this might end up requiring more then just Applescript, possible Xcode, but who knows.

Thanks

macfaninpdx · Mar 18, 2008

I am not in front of my mac, but IIRC you could try something like this:

Code:

property theCommand : ""

repeat while theCommand is ""
   display dialog "Enter the value to search for:" default answer theCommand
   set theCommand to text returned of result
end repeat

try
   do shell script "find / | grep -i  " & quoted form of theCommand
on error errorMsg number errorNum
   display alert "Error " & errorNum message errorMsg buttons "Cancel" default button 1
end try

Also check out Automator. There is a lot of cool stuff you can do, including having it prompt you for variables to insert into the commands to follow.

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macOS Apple Script Help, "do shell command"

Ohsnaptakethat

macrumors newbie

macfaninpdx

macrumors regular

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