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bashmacosshellapplescriptzsh

Insert a variable in-between ' ' in a shell osascript command?

I am using a MacOS osascript command in a shell script and I try to run the following command:

APPNAME=$@

if pgrep -x "$APPNAME" > /dev/null # checking if app is open
then
  echo "Closing..."
  osascript -e 'quit app $APPNAME'

else
  echo "*** The app is not open"
fi

Ideally, the command would be osascript -e 'quit app "Calendar"' as an example of a working solution. However, I can't seem to insert a variable in-between ' ' quotation marks.

What would be a workaround?

Solution

  • Trying to build a script dynamically using string interpolation is always fragile. You should pass the app name as an argument to the AppleScript, so that you don't have to worry about escaping any characters through two levels of interpreters.

    APPNAME=$1  # The name should be passed as a single argument.

if pgrep -x "$APPNAME" > /dev/null # checking if app is open
then
  echo "Closing..."
  osascript -e 'on run argv' -e 'quit app (item 1 of argv)' -e 'end run' "$APPNAME"

else
  echo "*** The app is not open"
fi

    No matter what the value of APPNAME is, you are executing the exact same script; the only difference is the argument that script receives.