Double Clicking a shell script on Mac

Question

i have a small script that runs a jar file :

#!/bin/bash

prefix="foo";
name=`ls ${prefix}*.jar`;
echo $name;
java -jar $name prop1.properties prop2.properties

when i run it in the terminal using ./myscript.sh, it works fine and the jar file executes, but when i rename it in myscript.command and double click it, i have this error :

ls: foo*.jar : No such file or directory

I saw that apparently a .command file opens a terminal at the root directory, so I tried finding the directory containing myscript.command using that :

dir = 'find <dir> -maxdepth 1 -type d -name '*myDirContainingJar*' -print -quit'
cd $dir

but dir is just blank, any ideas ???

Answer 1

Opening a shell script from Finder on macOS (whether it has extension .command or is an extension-less executable shell script) makes the current user's home directory the current directory (as of macOS 10.12).

To explicitly change to the directory in which the script itself is located in a bash script, use:

cd -- "$(dirname -- "$BASH_SOURCE")"

^{In this invocation scenario, the following POSIX-compliant variation, which uses $0 in lieu of $BASH_SOURCE, would work too: cd -- "$(dirname -- "$0")"}

Note:

• Generally, if your script is invoked via a symlink and you want to change to the target's directory (the actual script file's directory as opposed to the directory in which the symlink is located), more work is needed - see this answer of mine.

• When opening a script from Finder, however, this issue does not apply, because Finder itself resolves a symlink to its (ultimate) target and then invokes the target directly.

Answer 2

The problem with your script is that it runs with a different working directory than you tested it with. When you do ls something in a script, the script looks in the current working directory (where you cded last in case you're in a terminal), not in the directory the script is in. In general, when writing scripts like this you should use the full path of the file you're referring to or figure out the directory of the script and point to the file relative to that. One solution works in Bash, but it might not in the shell you're using.