How to prepend a character to start of each line in 250,000+ line file using a script

The argument for osascript -e can contain newlines:

osascript -e 'set x to "a"
say x'

You can also specify multiple -e arguments:

osascript -e 'set x to "a"' -e 'say x'

Or if you use a heredoc, bash interprets three characters (\, $, and `) between <<END and END but no characters between <<'END' and END.

osascript <<'END'
set x to "a"
say x
END

Edit:

Since osascript can operate with a heredoc (ie take input from /dev/stdin) then one can just write the script as a whole file and prepend with the correct shebang line:

#!/usr/bin/env osascript

set x to "a"
say x

This also allows you to save your apple script as a actual program in ~/Applications/.app using the following procedure (changing for your script's name):

mkdir -p ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS
touch ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS/<APP_NAME>
open -A TextEdit ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS/<APP_NAME>

Ensure that both the script file in .../MacOS/ and the matches

I'm not sure I understand correctly - if in the third line of Your script You're checking whether ftp service is running You can use following script:

#!/bin/bash                                                                                                                   

launchctl list | grep ftpd

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    IPADDR=$(ifconfig -a | perl -nle'/(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)/ && print $1' | grep -v 127.0.0.1)
    launchctl load "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist"
    osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to display alert \"FTP Launched and ready for file-transfer\" & character id 8233 & character id 8233 & character id 8233 & \"Address: ftp://\" & \"$IPADDR\" & \":21\" & character id 8233 & \"User Name: \" & \"$USER\""
else
    launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist"
    osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to display alert "FTP session closed"'
fi

Run this a sudo. Explanation:

• To check if job is running use launchctl list.
• To get ip address quickly use my perl script (You may want to grep it differently in order to get rid of additional IP addresses.
• The only problem now is that Finder app is not brought to front but this can be solved if needed.