Wait for a "do shell script" command to finish

i have an applescript that has to call a few external applications. i currently do this by setting the exact syntax of the external command in a string variable, then issue a "do shell script cmd" (seen many examples across the net using this standard)
my applescript continues beyond these commands. how do i set the applescript to either wait for the above external command to finish, or not?
regards
jingo_man

Usually AppleScript will wait for a shell script to complete before it continues, but adding an ampersand (&) at the end of the shell script command will make it run in the background, which allows the AppleScript to continue. See Technical Note 2065: do shell script in AppleScript for more information.

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Beginner question - testing for null string from shell script command

I'm trying to test the result of a shell script command. I want to put out a message if the result is a null string. At present I get this applescript error "The command exited with a non-zero status"
I'm sure this is a simple question ... but I can't figure out how to do it. Help!

You can use try clause for the problem:
set _result to ""
try
set _result to do shell script "/blah/andblah"
end

Which .bash does "do shell script" commands use?

The "do shell script" command uses the Bourne shell "sh". But I am curious to know which .bash it uses to define the shell environment variables.
I ran into a problem installing a third-party unix program which required new environment variables to be defined in order to execute. Defining these variables and executing this program from the terminal worked fine.
But executing it within a "do shell script" command in an Applescript - the program died silently because the environment variables it required were not defined in the shell Applescript uses. It appears to invoke a new shell which does not inherit the environment variables defined in your home user shell.
(I found this out by 'do shell script "set"' which listed the environment variables Applescript knows about - the ones I defined for the third-party program were not listed).
A "brute force" way of fixing this is to pass the environment variables directly:
do shell script "export THIRDPARTY_ENVVAR=blah; /usr/sbin/thirdpartyprogam"
This works but not exactly elegant, particularly when you need to pass a number of variables.
So - any better ways to do this? Can I edit the .bash Applescript uses, and where is it?
Thanks.

Another option that might work for you... if you are saving/distributing your AppleScript as an "Application bundler" is to group all your shell env. variables and other commands into a separate shell script file. Then include the shell script inside your app bundle. Locate the shell script at runtime and run that with "do shell script".
For example, create "myShellScript.sh"
#!/bin/sh
export THIRDPARTY_ENVVAR=blah
# ... more variable declarations..
/usr/sbin/thirdpartyprogam
# ... more shell commands...
Store the shell script file inside your AppleScript bundle's Contents -> Resources folder (remember to make the shell script executable). Then your AppleScript can find your shell script at runtime and execute it like this:
set ssPath to quoted form of POSIX path of (path to resource "myShellScript.sh")
set stdout to do shell script ssPath
Steve

Complex shell script command

HI Experts
can anybody know what this complex shell script command is doing .. i know its looking for some character at some point but exact explanation will be good for learning.
egrep "^.{292}[CFOPRA][EPR]$" dn.dat
Thanks

A simple example can often demonstrate how things work:
# cat sample.dat
xABCDE1
xABCDE2
ABCDE3
ABCDE4
xDBCEA5
xDBCEA6
# egrep "^.A" sample.dat
xABCDE1
ABCDE4
Above matches lines that begin with any character followed by an "A".
# egrep "^.{2}A" sample.dat
xABCDE2
Above matches lines that begin with any 2 characters followed by an "A".
# egrep "^.{2}[AD]" sample.dat
xABCDE2
xDBCEA6
Above matches lines that begin with any 2 characters followed by an "A" or D".
# egrep "^.{6}[345]$" sample.dat
ABCDE4
xDBCEA5
Above matches any lines ending with "3", "4" or "5",
provided it's the 7th character.
# egrep "^.{5}[345]$" sample.dat
ABCDE3
Above matches any lines ending with "3", "4" or "5",
provided it's the 6th character.
# egrep "^.{6}[EA][26]$" sample.dat
xABCDE2
xDBCEA6
Above matches any lines ending with combinations of "E2, E6, A2, A6",
provided the combination starts at character position 7.
{code}

Xgettext for perl and shell scripts on Solaris 9

Hi......I have to internationalized perl and shell scripts on Linux and Solaris 9.
I have used gettext on linux to internationalized both perl and shell scripts but on solaris i m not able to
achieve the same.
If we see help of xgettect on Linux, it shows input file options for Perl, Shell, C, C++ etc but help for
xgettext on Solaris shows input file option for C only.
Can you please provide me some way of using xgettext for perl and shell scripts on Solaris 9 or
is there any other way of internationalizing perl and shell scripts on Solaris 9.
Many Thanks,
Lokesh

Signature link blocked.
db
Contentprise wrote:
Hi......I have to internationalized perl and shell scripts on Linux and Solaris 9.
I have used gettext on linux to internationalized both perl and shell scripts but on solaris i m not able to
achieve the same.
If we see help of xgettect on Linux, it shows input file options for Perl, Shell, C, C++ etc but help for
xgettext on Solaris shows input file option for C only.
Can you please provide me some way of using xgettext for perl and shell scripts on Solaris 9 or
is there any other way of internationalizing perl and shell scripts on Solaris 9.
Many Thanks

How to prepare for Converting UNIX shell scripts to PL/SQL

Hi All
I was said, that i may have to convert a lot of unix shell script to PL/SQL, what are the concepts i need to know to do it efficently,
what are the options PL/SQL is having to best do that.
I know the question is little unclear, but I too dont have much inputs about that i'm sorry for that, just its a question of how
to prepare myself to do it the best way. What are the concepts i have to be familiar with.
Many Thanks
MJ

Just how much work is involved, is hard to say. Many years ago I also wrote (more than once) a complete ETL system using a combination of shell scripts, SQL*Plus and PL/SQL.
If the PL/SQL code is fairly clean, uses bind variables and not substitution variables, then it should be relatively easy to convert that PL/SQL code in the script to a formal stored procedure in the database.
There is however bits and pieces that will be difficult to move into the PL/SQL layer as it requires new software - like for example FTP'ing a file from the production server to the ETL server. This can be done using external o/s calls from within PL/SQL. Or, you can install a FTP API library in PL/SQL and FTP that file directly into a CLOB and parse and process the CLOB.
Think of Oracle as an o/s in its own right. In Oracle we have a mail client, a web browser, IPC methods like pipes and messages queues, cron, file systems, web servers and services, etc. And PL/SQL is the "shell scripting" (times a thousand) language of this Oracle o/s .
In some cases you will find it fairly easy to map a Unix o/s feature or command to one in Oracle. For example, a Unix wget to fetch a HTML CSV file can easily be replaced in Oracle using a UTL_HTTP call.
On the other hand, techniques used in Unix like creating a pipe to process data, grep for certain stuff and awk certain tokens for sed to process further... in Oracle this will look and work a lot different and use SQL.

Wait for process before continuing script

Hey there,
Just been working on this for a bit now in script editor. I'm still really new to the script editor functions, but would like some direction. If automater is a alternative then please help me understand how to make it work with that.
Otherwise all help is greatly appreciated!
Goal of the script:
1) load disk image. (This works)
2) open application requiring disk image. (This works)
3) Check to see in app process is running: running --> wait till it is not, when not running --> eject above disk image
Code:
tell application "Finder" -- Note when using tell Finder it gives can't get running of process
          if process "App Process" is not running then
                    set bootDisk to name of startup disk
                    set otherDisks to every disk whose (name is not bootDisk) and (name is not "iTunes") and (name is not "Applications") and (name is not "BOOTCAMP")
                    repeat with myDisk in otherDisks
                              try
eject myDisk -- When using tell System Events it give Expected end of line but found identifier on line.
                              end try
                    end repeat
          end if
end tell
Another: Oddly the script will run the app, it throws the error while running, but the app still runs. The disk Image is also gone.
Thanks again for any helpful comments and direction.
-- Josh

Okay, Neil and tw^3, thanks you for your help, I got the effect I wanted cleaned up the code a smidge.
Code:
tell application "Finder"
          open document file "DiskImage" of folder "GAMES" of disk "Applications"
    delay 2 & close every window
          open application file "App" of folder "Myth2" of folder "GAMES" of disk "Applications"
end tell
delay 4.5
tell application "System Events"
          repeat
                         if not (exists process "process") then
                                        if exists "DiskName" then
                                                       do shell script "hdiutil detach \"/Volumes/DiskName\""
                  error number -128 --
            end if
                         end if
       if exists (process "process") then
       end if
       delay 10
          end repeat
end tell
Last little question about what I have, in the if statement checking if the process does not exist anymore, I put quit after the shell script to eject. but it would just hang there. Would it be better to do a repeat while? or would you just user cancel (error -128) the script from executing like I have it.
-Josh
EDIT: made it work better, used a repeat while... and moved the if not exists after the repeat...
repeat while exists "app process"
end repeat
if not (exists process "app process")
......blah blah code code
end if

Passing dialog text to a shell script command

Hi. Newbie here. I got a good book, will learn this sooner or later.
But right now, I got a problem I can't figure out
I'd like to display a dialog box that requests some text. I'd then like to use that text as the variable for a shell commmand.
Let's say for instance that I want to prompt for the asset tag number of the machine and want the result to end up in the ARD Info 1 field. I've got the first and third line, just don't know how to "place" the captured text:
display dialog "What is this Mac's assett tag number?" default answer ""
do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop Text1 <resultfrom_dialoghere>"
Anyone?
Darrin

You use text returned of:
dialog reply n : Reply record for the ‘display dialog’ command
properties
button returned (Unicode text, r/o) : name of button chosen (empty if ‘giving up after’ was supplied and dialog timed out)
text returned (Unicode text, r/o) : text entered (present only if ‘default answer’ was supplied)
gave up (boolean, r/o) : Did the dialog time out? (present only if ‘giving up after’ was supplied)
ex:
set _result to text returned of (display dialog "What is this Mac's assett tag number?" default answer "")
do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop Text1 " & quoted form of _result

Automtor shell script "command not found"

I want to include the execution of a shell script in Automator. The script just executes a third-party application (actually, pdftk) with certain parameters. I have written the script, saved it in my Home directory as "foo.sh", made it executable, and can correctly call it from Terminal with ./foo.sh. It works as expected.
But if I include it in Automator's workflow, into action "Run shell script", its execution breaks complaining that "pdftk: command not found". This indicates that the script is correctly found and read by Automator. How is it, that Terminal's bash can find the command, but Automator doesn't ? Have commands to be written in a special way to be understood by Automator ? Perhaps third-party commands are not allowed in Automator ?

As twtwtw has said, you environment when running Automator is NOT the same as when you are in a Terminal session.
pwd:
/Users/harris
/bin/ls -dlaeO@ .
drwxr-xr-x 349 harris harris - 11866 Mar 14 22:06 .
id -a: uid=501(harris)
gid=501(harris)
groups=501(harris),
204(_developer),
100(_lpoperator),
98(_lpadmin),
80(admin),
61(localaccounts),
12(everyone)
$# 0
printenv: SHELL=/bin/bash
TMPDIR=/var/folders/zv/zvU6+bMiHTeElG+JIWOdzk+++TI/-Tmp-/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/tmp/launch-rVMvHQ/Render
USER=harris
COMMAND_MODE=unix2003
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/launch-fH4Gt7/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0:0
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PWD=/Users/harris
DBUS_LAUNCHD_SESSION_BUS_SOCKET=/tmp/launch-RIPIu6/unix_domain_listener
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/harris
LOGNAME=harris
DISPLAY=/tmp/launch-ttdbVO/org.x:0
FRED=3-Mar-2009
_=/usr/bin/printenv

Shell scripts commands

Hello.
I'm having my first contact with Oracle Retail and I'm doing some shell scripts to extract/transform/load data.
I was checking some scripts and I saw some commands as rmse_terminate, message, verifybinary, _call.
Do you know where I can find some document explaining these commands and providing others if exist?
Today I'm working with AIP, RDF and RMS.
Let' me know if you can provide me a link or other path where I can find the document
Thanks
Edson

Hi Ahmed,
Can you please mention the names of the scripts where you found these calls, and the application to which those scripts belong to?
Erik

Shell script Command Merge

Can anyone help me to merge two commands into a single command
1. cd ../../https-eportaldevw5/logs | cat pid
2. ps -ef | grep $pid
note-This $pid will be the output of command 1

Thanks.. that was really helpful to me..
one more question..
when I am executing multiple commands one after another in a single go then one of the in-between command is not executed and skipped without execution.
Example:
echo "************************ SCC *****************************" > /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw5/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** GLS ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw3/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** TE Corporate ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportalpoc/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** GCT ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw1/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** eCommerce ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw6/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** IMO ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw7/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** ADR ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw8/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** Corporate Trust Portal Server ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw13/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** Corporate Trust App Server********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw14/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
echo "****************** GMW ********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
ps -ef | grep $(cat /opt/netscape/iPlanet/https-eportaldevw4/logs/pid) >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
cat /tmp/output/op1.txt
In above example,
echo "****************** Corporate Trust App Server********************" >> /tmp/output/op1.txt
this command is skipped when I am executing all commands in a signle go..
Can anyone suggest me anything in this.

Startup shell script help for newbie?

New to UNIX (linux)... need the bash shell script commands for my r.c local file to start my services when server boots.
I got my ds, dps and admin server in their respective /opt directories. I need the shell commands to have these start. Of course I can start them manually but when I try a line like this in a script, it doesnt work:
./var/opt/sun/directory-server/slapd-dsserver/start-dsserver
Some path problem or dot thing?

There are a few other things you may want to consider, such as what the default browser is, are tabs being used, is the page loaded yet, etc, but Safari has a do javascript command in it's scripting dictionary. The following script will open a new document and run your specified javascript, or you can go to their NPR Program Stream Page and download a playlist that will run directly from iTunes.
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px; height: 335px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFDDFF;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
set my_script to "NPR.Player.openPlayer(2, 0, '03-21-2008', NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW, NPR.Player.Type.PROGRAM, NPR.Player.Mode.LIVE)"
tell application "Safari"
activate
set the URL of the front document to "http://www.npr.org/"
if my page_loaded(20) is false then error numner - 128 -- page not loaded in time
do JavaScript my_script in document 1
end tell
on page_loaded(timeout_value) -- from http://www.apple.com/applescript/archive/safari/jscript.01.html
delay 2
repeat with i from 1 to the timeout_value
tell application "Safari"
if (do JavaScript "document.readyState" in document 1) is "complete" then
return true
else if i is the timeout_value then
return false
else
delay 1
end if
end tell
end repeat
return false
end page_loaded
</pre>

Java GUI for a shell script

I have a file with passwd format.I made a script for this file that is working as I wanted it to work.I have a list of options and each time I give an option,the script is doing something(for example,if I press "b" it makes something and if I press "a" it makes something else).All the results are an output from the file.
My question is how can I create a GUI in java for this script.For example if I want the script to do what it would do if I pressed the "a" button on my keyboard,but not by pressing "a",but by choosing from a drop down list or some other graphical feature(by ticking a check box,clicking a button etc).Can I do this with java?
Lazaros

Hi,
I understand you can create a Java Swing gui for a bash shell script which takes both complex input and writes output to the stdout & files, to be specific. Is that correct?
If yes, could you give a simple example. Say for the following shell script.
#!/bin/sh
printf "Enter input\n"
i=0
while [ $i -ne 1 ]; do
read $inputVar
if [ "$inputVar" == "y" ]; then
printf "You typed yes\n"
i=1
elif [ "$inputVar" == "y" ]; then
printf "you typed no\n"
i=1
else
printf "Enter a valid character\n"
i=0
fi
done
Could you also point to some URL's which might help? Googling for "Java Gui for shell script" returns this as the first page, others dont really help. Googling "GUI for shell script" returns all other gui toolkits for xes but thats not what I want. I want a cross platform (nixes, Win*, MacOS* ) gui for a shell script ( which I plan to run using cygwin etc).
TIA
Vinod

Starting and stopping an SQL query from within a Shell script

DB version:10gR2
OS Version:AIX
We have a C++ application called WpnCreate.cpp, which is causing some locking problems.
So, we have decided to capture(using SPOOL) the locking info(session info, blocking program,..etc) using an SQL query.
WpnCreate.cpp program is initiated by a shell script. So we need this SQL query(.sql) to start firing just before WpnCreate.cpp is called and when WpnCreate.cpp has finished executing, we need the SQL query execution to stop.
But how do i stop the sql query execution? Should i capture the session id and serial# of this session and use kill -9 at the end of the shell script?
Flow of the Shell script should be like this
Step1. Start firing the SQL query which captures the locking info and SPOOL them to a file
Step2. Execute WpnCreate.cpp program
Step3. Stop the firing of SQL query once WpnCreate.cpp has finished executing ( i don't know how)How will i go about achieving this?

How can you run your step 2 untill & unless your step 1 gets over. You can run in background but then it will not capture the correct information.
I think you need to run your step 1 after step 2 , then only you will be able to capture the information.
You can run your C++ program in background and can wait for some time using sleep command and then run the query to check the locking information.

Input to a shell script

Hey guys,
I was wondering let's say I have a text field called "text field"
I need the contents of it on a click of a button to go to a do shell script "stuff stuff/ stuff stuff/ (content from text field here)/ stuff stuff" Some thing of this sort. Hope this makes sense, Thanks a lot, Max

Thanks for the response Ed! I still can't seem to get it to work. Let me explain in a little more detail what I need to happen, any help would be great!
I have an app that starts a server from a do shell script command.
It technically never ends, and it it constantly outputting data. As a result when I run the program, the server starts and runs fine, but the program locks up because it is waiting for the command to end. Is there a way I can get the data to go somewhere, I don't need to look at it so it could just disappear.
Here is my code:
on clicked theObject
if theObject is button "Start" of window "Window" then
set serverName to content of text field "servername" of window "Window"
set adminPass to content of text field "adminpass" of window "Window"
set serverPassword to content of text field "serverpassword" of window "Window"
set botsTrue to state of button "bots" of window "Window"
set statsTrue to state of button "stats" of window "Window"
set serverPass to state of button "serverpass" of window "Window"
set shellScript to "/Applications/Zap\\!\\ Folder/ZAP.app/Contents/MacOS/ZAP -dedicated -hostname " & serverName
set shellScript to shellScript & " -adminpassword "
set shellScript to shellScript & adminPass
if botsTrue = 1 then set shellScript to shellScript & " -bots"
if statsTrue = 1 then set shellScript to shellScript & " -stats"
if serverPass = 1 then set shellScript to shellScript & " -password "
if serverPass = 1 then set shellScript to shellScript & serverPassword
do shell script shellScript
display dialog shellScript
end if
end clicked
Thanks a lot!

Wait for a "do shell script" command to finish

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