OSASCRIPT(1)            System General Commands Manual            OSASCRIPT(1)

NAME
     osascript - execute OSA scripts

SYNOPSIS
     osascript [-l language] [-e command] [-s flags] [programfile]

DESCRIPTION
     osascript executes the given script file, or standard input if none is
     given.  Scripts may be plain text or compiled scripts.  osascript was
     designed for use with AppleScript, but will work with any Open Scripting
     Architecture (OSA) language.  To get a list of the OSA languages
     installed on your system, use osalang(1).  For documentation on Apple-
     Script itself, see <http://www.apple.com/applescript>.  The options are
     as follows:

     -e command
           Enter one line of a script.  If -e is given, osascript will not
           look for a filename in the argument list.  Multiple -e commands may
           be given to build up a multi-line script.  Because most scripts use
           characters that are special to many shell programs (e.g., Apple-
           Script uses single and double quote marks, ``('', ``)'', and
           ``*''), the command will have to be correctly quoted and escaped to
           get it past the shell intact.

     -l language
           Override the language for any plain text files.  Normally, plain
           text files are compiled as AppleScript.

     -s flags
           Modify the output style.  The flags argument is a string consisting
           of any of the modifier characters e, h, o, and s.  Multiple modi-
           fiers can be concatenated in the same string, and multiple -s
           options can be specified.  The modifiers come in exclusive pairs;
           if conflicting modifiers are specified, the last one takes prece-
           dence.  The meanings of the modifier characters are as follows:

           h  Print values in human-readable form (default).
           s  Print values in recompilable source form.

              osascript normally prints its results in human-readable form:
              strings do not have quotes around them, characters are not
              escaped, braces for lists and records are omitted, etc.  This is
              generally more useful, but can introduce ambiguities.  For exam-
              ple, the lists `{"foo", "bar"}' and `{{"foo", {"bar"}}}' would
              both be displayed as `foo, bar'.  To see the results in an unam-
              biguous form that could be recompiled into the same value, use
              the s modifier.

           e  Print script errors to stderr (default).
           o  Print script errors to stdout.

              osascript normally prints script errors to stderr, so downstream
              clients only see valid results.  When running automated tests,
              however, using the o modifier lets you distinguish script
              errors, which you care about matching, from other diagnostic
              output, which you don't.

SEE ALSO
     osacompile(1), osalang(1)

HISTORY
     osascript in Mac OS X 10.0 would translate `\r' characters in the output
     to `\n' and provided c and r modifiers for the -s option to change this.
     osascript now always leaves the output alone; pipe through tr(1) if nec-
     essary.

BUGS
     osascript does not yet provide any way to pass arguments to the script.

Mac OS X                         June 12, 2001                        Mac OS X