Embedding AppleScript inside a Bash — getting Error

applescriptbashterminal

I'm fiddling with bash for the first time and trying to get something simple to work.

#!/bin/bash
    while true ; do
    osascript <<EOF
        tell application "System Events"
            tell every desktop
                set picture to "/Users/bill/Desktop/bckg_changer/ARM_1885.jpg"
            end tell
        end tell
    EOF
done

When I execute this file from the command line, it throws:

Bills-iMac-4:test bill$ ./test.sh
./test.sh: line 11: syntax error: unexpected end of file

I found this question, and the formatting and structure is similar – so not sure what is missing.

The picture changing script itself works – it's when I add the while loop that the end of file error is thrown.

Caveat

I know this script doesn't make sense – the idea was to have a continuous loop, that would revert the desktop picture to the jpg if it was subsequently changed in the System Preferences. Obviously a poor choice of methods and resource use… 🙂

Best Answer

change

osascript <<EOF

osascript <<-EOF

The - lets you indent the terminating EOF.

Related Solutions

MacOS – AppleScript vs. Bash script

Both shell- and AppleScripts can be used just about anywhere either is appropriate.

AppleScripts work better when talking to apps and user-level system facilities. (For instance, you can say tell app "iTunes" to play and it will, or tell app "Finder" to open the first file of the second window.)

Shell scripts (you referred to bash) work better when talking to low-level system objects and Unixy stuff.

They're both interoperable: you can call a shell command from AppleScript with do shell script "command here" and you can call AppleScript code from the shell with osascript -e "AppleScript". Further, there's quite a bit of overlap between the two (especially when it comes to file system operations).

There are certainly more resources for learning shell scripting online than AppleScript and it doesn't help that AppleScript has a reputation for being a "read-only" language (i.e., harder to write than read).

In any case, the most modern way to do scripting is with Automator, where you can use either shell- or AppleScripting (or both) along with pre-built modules from various apps you have installed.

Applescript dialog, Bash alias/function

You can use the run handler to pass arguments:

dialog() {
    osascript -e 'on run args
    try
    tell app "SystemUIServer" to display dialog (item 1 of args)
    end
    activate app (path to frontmost application as text)
    end' "$1"
}

If you want to call it like dialog a b (instead of dialog 'a b'), change $1 to $*.

System Events quits automatically when it is not used, and there is a small delay when it is opened, so telling it to display the dialog would sometimes be slower.

Without the try block there would be an error if the user presses a cancel button. Without activate the previously focused window wouldn't get focus back when the dialog is closed.

You can use something like this to display text dialogs:

answer=$(osascript -e 'try
tell app "SystemUIServer"
set answer to text returned of (display dialog "" default answer "")
end
end
activate app (path to frontmost application as text)
answer' | tr '\r' ' ')
[ -z "$answer" ] && exit

Caveat

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – AppleScript vs. Bash script

Applescript dialog, Bash alias/function

Related Question