You might be wondering why I’d even want to link a shell script to an Automator action. Good question, I have no idea. It’s there, I have shell scripts and a Mac, seems like an obvious decision.
From the tutorial
The Run Shell Script action in this simple example runs the find command in the bash shell. In the Shell pop-up menu you can select other shells (such as csh or zsh) or Python or Perl as your scripting environment. The “Pass input” pop-up menu lets you choose input in the form of standard input (stdin) or as shell arguments. The Run Shell Script action is a useful tool, especially for rapid prototyping of scripts.
If, for some insane reason, you happen to use the same logic, this tutorial will be helpful. Although some knowledge of Automator is assumed. For example, “The Run Shell Script action shown [...] is included in the Mac OS X 10.4.2 update. It is not available in earlier versions of Mac OS X 10.4 or in Xcode 2.1.” It’s nice to let me know what versions of OS X it’s available in, but really, where is it at on OS X 10.4?
Apple’s using shell scripts with Applescript.
Here’s a presentation at the Scientific Computing meeting at Cambridge University on Applescript to build a User interface for command-line applications.
Here’s a tutorial on providing feedback with applescript.
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