how to pass command-line arguments to a program run with the open command?

Question

Is there a way to pass arguments to a program being run via:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ~/my_executable

I have tried:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ~/my_executable arg1 arg2

But this is interpreted as telling the terminal to open ~/my_executable ~/arg1 ~/arg2.

I have tried:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app '~/my_executable arg1 arg2'

But it picks up arg1 and arg2 as if they were part of the path rather than arguments.

I have tried:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ~/my_executable | xargs arg1 arg2

I have also tried:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ~/my_executable --args arg1 arg2

But with that flag, args are passed to the terminal.

NOTE

I am only allowed to change the arguments to Terminal.app (the part within [ ]):

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app [~/my_executable arg1 arg2]

Answer 1

Edit: Leaving the original answer below as some people seem to find it useful, but keep in mind that this doesn't really answers OP's question, this is to pass arguments to an app opened with "open" not to and app opened with Terminal.app which was opened with "open".

You can find your answer by running open without arguments:

% open Usage: open [-e] [-t] [-f] [-W] [-R] [-n] [-g] [-h] [-b <bundle identifier>] [-a <application>] [filenames] [--args arguments]

[...]

--args All remaining arguments are passed in argv to the application's main() function instead of opened.

[...]

You can see there is an option --args you can use it like this:

open ./Untitled.app --args arg1 arg2 arg3

I tested it on el Capitan (10.11.3) so I don't know if the option is present in earlier versions.

Answer 2

Probably the easiest way is to create a temporary shell script, e.g.

$ echo "~/my_executable arg1 arg2" > /tmp/tmp.sh ; chmod +x /tmp/tmp.sh ; open -a Terminal /tmp/tmp.sh ; rm /tmp/tmp.sh