Question

Im building an app for learning purposes of using applescript to send multiple commands during an action. Below is the code I’m messing with but I have stripped out the actions in between the “” and replaced them with numbers. Everything works fine in applescript but making this into an NSApplescript initwithsource: line has been a bother.

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    set currentTab to do script "1"
    do script "2" in currentTab
    do script "3" in currentTab
    do script "4" in currentTab
    delay 0.5
    tell application "Finder" to set visible of process "Terminal" to false
end tell

What is the best way to combine this applescript into a single line? Thanks!

Answer 1

“What is the best way to combine this applescript into a single line?”

Use AppleScript? 😀

First, in AppleScript Editor, open the Preferences window and click the option to Show Script menu in menu bar.

Then choose Open Scripts Folder from the script menu item up in the upper right of the screen.

Create a new AppleScript .scptd document with the following script:

tell application "AppleScript Editor"
    set string_ to text of first document

    -- make a list with each line of the script
    set stringLines to paragraphs of string_
    set originalDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters

    -- add newlines 
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "\\n"

    -- now combine the items in the list using newlines
    set stringNewlines to stringLines as string

    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "\""
    set stringNewlines to text items of stringNewlines
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "\\\""
    set stringNewlines to stringNewlines as string

    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to originalDelims
    set stringNewlines to "@\"" & stringNewlines & "\""

    set the clipboard to stringNewlines
end tell

(Note that this script isn’t perfect: it works fine for simple scripts like the one you provided, but isn’t able to convert itself).

Save that as a script in the Scripts folder you revealed earlier.

Then open your script document you want to convert and make it the front document in AppleScript Editor. Then invoke the conversion script by choosing it from the Script menu.

Given the script you provided, it should produce the following constant NSString:

@"tell application \"Terminal\"\n   activate\n  set currentTab to do script \"1\"\n do script \"2\" in currentTab\n do script \"3\" in currentTab\n do script \"4\" in currentTab\n delay 0.5\n tell application \"Finder\" to set visible of process \"Terminal\" to false\nend tell\n"