command linemac
On macOS (eg. Mojave 10.14), what is the difference between the diskutil unmount and diskutil eject commands?
For example, if I want to execute this from the command line (eg. bash in terminal), but I want to have the same, ‘safe’ result as though I had clicked the eject icon in the Finder:
Programmatically, I'm sure the difference between the first two (.command vs. .tool) are subtle, while the third is essentially a simple, default shell script. And does in fact associate with Xcode 4.1.
This isn't quite perfect for what you want, but I think it might get you closer. Quicksilver has a command line tool. When installed, you can pipe files from the command line to Quicksilver app, and from there send them as attachments in Mail.
To install Quicksilver command line tool, activate Quicksilver. Then navigate to Quicksilver > Preferences to open preferences window. Click on Preferences on top right of window. On the left, click on Command Line Tool and install.
In Terminal, you'll be able to type
qs path/to/file1 path/to/file2 path/to/file3 path/to/file4
Pressing enter will send those files to Quicksilver's first pane. Press tab to move to the action pane and choose the Mail/New Email With Attachment action. Press enter, and a new email with your selected files attached should appear.
Note that you will also have to install the Mail and Command Line plugins in Quicksilver (Quicksilver > Preferences > Plug Ins).
Best Answer
You can at least be certain that
diskutil ejectdoes all thatdiskutil unmountdoes, plus (sometimes) more. Examples given in the man page mention removable media readers equipped with a motor to physically eject a volume, such as a CD-ROM player. Also, when there are more than one filesystem on the media,diskutil ejectwill unmount all volumes on the media, whilediskutil unmountjust unmounts the one filesystem you mention explicitly.When in doubt, I'd always go for the
ejectverb.