Need Help Writing a Shell Script

Question

Basically I'm writing a script that opens TextEdit so I can open it from the Terminal. I also want it to run in the background so I can continue using the Terminal without having to quit TextEdit first. So far I've figured out two ways of doing this, and neither one does exactly what I want it to do. Here's the first one I tried:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit $@ &
The problem with this is that if TextEdit is already running, it opens a new instance of it to open the files, and it doesn't bring the app into focus when I run it. So I decided to try this:
open -a "TextEdit" $@ &
This way all files open in the same instance of TextEdit and it brings the app to the front, but it won't let me save anything I don't have write privileges for, even if I run it with sudo. I Googled it and apparently what happens is it runs "open" as root but runs the actual application that I'm opening as the current user.
So basically what I need to know is if there's a way of doing this that will congregate all files into the same instance of TextEdit and bring the app to the front when I launch it, but still let me run it as root with sudo. If not, is there at least a way to check if TextEdit is running and throw an error if it is?

Answer 1

#!/usr/bin/env bash
if ps ax | grep '[T]extEdit'; then
echo "TextEdit is already running!"
else
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &
fi
open -a TextEdit "$@"
osascript -e 'tell application "TextEdit" to activate'
Example:
your.script "text file.txt"
NOTE 1: When posting code to this forum, enclose your code in
...your code goes here...
This will make sure that all your indentation and other meta-characters that might get interpreted by the forum code will be left alone.
NOTE 2: The $@ will ONLY preserve quoted strings as a single argument if it is specified as "$@". That is to say it MUST be inside a pair fo double-quotes. Otherwise it is the same as $* The missing ".." are what messed up your ability to treat a file with space as a single argument. ALSO NOTE, I specified the file on the command line inside quotes (could be single or double), or you could use  if you desire.
NOTE 2 and a half:
If you DO NOT want to put quotes around the space filled filename when invoking your script, you could change your "$@" to "$*"
open -a TextEdit "$*"
The difference is that using "$@" will allow specifying several filenames on the command line and TextEdit will open all of them at once. The use of "$*" means you can only open 1 file per use of your script. Not a big deal, but I figured you should know the options available to you.
NOTE 3: I've simplified your script.
I do not know why you decided that if you are root you wanted to use sudo, since sudo gives normal users root privileges, and root already has root privileges.
Actually based on earlier exchanges, I would have thought that you wanted to start TextEdit using sudo, unless it was already running:
sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &
so that you had root privileges allowing you to write files in places you were normally not allowed. Then again, maybe I was reading the earlier posting wrong (won't be the first time ).
NOTE 4: The use of
if [ "$textedit" > /dev/null ]; then
is just plain wierd This translates to the command:
test "$textedit" >/dev/null
which redirects standard output into /dev/null, so the actually command looks like
test "$textedit"
which will essentially return TRUE if $textedit has a string in it, and FALSE if $textedit is empty.
I decided to just use the completion status of the grep command as a way to decide if TextEdit was running on not.
NOTE 5: I simplified the ps|grep|grep command with a trick I learned several years ago. The '[T]extEdit' regular expression exactly matchs TextEdit, except that it DOES NOT match a ps line that has '[T]extEdit'. So I can get rid of one grep command because it will never match the grep command in the ps output.
NOTE 6: I moved the open and osascript commands outside the if structure, as I assumed you wanted osascript to bring TextEdit to the foreground regardless of whether it was already running or not, and the open command was identical for both halfs of the if structure. If this is a bad assumption, feel free do put it back inside the if structure.
Message was edited by: BobHarris