open programs with applescript

Question

2 part question:

I'm simply trying to run programs using applescript from the terminal, so I tried:

$ osascript tell application "iTunes" to activate 

and get the error:

osascript: tell: No such file or directory 

Giving the full path to the program did not work either. What am I missing? The second part of the question is what I eventually want to use applescript for. I would like to use it to open an application I built using py2app. Can applescript open any mac app or just certain ones that are already compatible.

Thanks

Answer 1

Try this. Notice you use "-e" when you are writing the command. Without "-e" you would give a path to an applescript to run. Also notice the string command must be in quotes.

osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\" to activate" 

And if you have a multi-line applescript you use "-e" before each line like this...

osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\"" -e "activate" -e "end tell" 

If you want to open an application just use the unix "open" command...

open "/path/to/application" 

If you wanted to open an application using applescript and the "activate" command doesn't work (it should work for almost everything though) then tell the Finder to open it. Remember that applescript uses colon delimited paths...

osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to open file \"path:to:application\"" 

Answer 2

In a bash shell (like in Terminal), you can send multiple lines to osascript by using a "here document".

osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\"" -e "activate" -e "end tell" 

becomes

osascript <<EOF tell application "iTunes"    activate end tell EOF 

As an old-skool Unix hacker, I save these little snippets in my $HOME/bin directory and call them from the command line. Still learning the particulars, though.

Alan