It's most likely due to the VLC RC client wanting an Xterm interactive shell instead of a non-interactive shell, or some weirdness with the VLC OS X app still attempting to launch (It's bouncing in my dock while it runs).
In any case, a simple work around is to have automator launch a script to run in terminal.
The script would be simply:
#/bin/bash
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I rc http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_fourfm/format/pls.pls --sout '#standard{mux=raw,access=file{overwrite},dst=/Users/person/Documents/scripts/r4.mp3,display=novideo}' --run-time=1800 --stop-time=1800
It should have execute permissions (chmod +x)
Then from Automator, you launch it like you normally would. In this case, I had Automator "Run Shell Script" of
open -a Terminal /path/to/script.sh
Note you may want to add the --play-and-exit option, otherwise VLC will stay open even after the 1800 seconds. By default, it will stop at the end of the playlist and wait. --play-and-exit will tell it to quit when the playlist ends (in this case a single file).
Alternatively, you can directly launch the script with a double click, skipping Automator completely, if you change the suffix to .command. That may be more direct, depending on your actual goal.
Best Answer
As you've likely discovered,
touching a nonexistent file will create a zero-byte file with the name you specify. (touchis also used to update the modification time on an existing file. Seeman touchfor further details.)The problem you're running into is that though a completely empty file is valid HTML, text, or Markdown, it is not valid RTF—this is true of many file formats, actually, which are structured in a particular way and require some data to be present be valid.
Based on my experimentation, the bare minimum RTF file appears to be
If you'd like to create a blank RTF file from the shell, try this:
Note the above will overwrite
Foo.rtfif it exists.