MacOS – Can’t get commands inside .bash_profile startup script to run

bashmacbook promacos

From my bash shell (latest version of Lion) if I issue the command…

source ~/sh/bashmarks.sh

The bashmarks.sh script will run and the functionality it provides is available. However I don't want to manually run this script so I have tried to put it into my ~/.bash_profile (the above command is the only thing in the file).

If I quit Terminal and then restart it, the ~/.bash_profile runs, but it reports…

: command not found

How can I get the commands contained in this script to run when the Terminal is opened? I know the correct .bash_profile is being run, because I can modify the file with some other commands and those don't work either, but the point being is I can see the output change when I modify the contents of the file and restart the shell. So it is picking up the right ~ user directory (I am the only account on the machine).

Best Answer

Does your .bash_profile have DOS-style line endings? Strange error messages like that often are "corrupted" by a \r character.

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My Automator Workflow fails because it fails to find the git command within the ‘Run Shell Script’ command? Need help

Scripts run via Automator use the default search path which usually does not include /usr/local/bin. In your case an easy fix would be to put

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

somewhere at the beginning of the script.

MacOS – Run AppleScript from bash 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

Best Answer

Related Solutions

My Automator Workflow fails because it fails to find the git command within the ‘Run Shell Script’ command? Need help

MacOS – Run AppleScript from bash script

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