Question

So I have the following script saved as usr/local/bin/spawn which opens a process in a new terminal window, and then closes that window:

#!/bin/sh
osascript <<END
tell app "Terminal" to do script "$1; logout"
END

So I can do

$ spawn nano

to open a new terminal window with nano running, and when I close nano the window also closes.

However, to spawn a command with arguments, like java -jar foo.jar, I need to use

$ spawn "java -jar foo.jar"

Is there a way to change the script so that the same will work without the quotes? For example,

$ spawn java -jar foo.jar

I have tried using the trick from this answer to a question that doesn’t deal with AppleScript. However that always caused Terminal.app to crash when I tried using spawn. Is there a way to escape the "$@" or a different implementation for this problem? It doesn’t necessarily have to use AppleScript.

Answer 1

#!/bin/sh
osascript <<END
tell app "Terminal" to do script "$@; logout"
END

seems to work for me.

Another option that would solve your problem would be to save the code to be executed in a file in a temporary folder and open it with Terminal like so:

#!/bin/sh
file=$(mktemp $TMPDIR/spawnXXXXXX)
echo '#!/bin/sh' > "$file"
echo "$@" >> "$file"
chmod +x "$file"
open -a Terminal "$file"

Or if you would like to open it in your current terminal program (Terminal, iTerm 2, etc.) you could use this script:

#!/bin/sh
file=$(mktemp $TMPDIR/spawnXXXXXX.command)
echo '#!/bin/sh' > "$file"
echo "$@" >> "$file"
chmod +x "$file"
open "$file"