os x

If you ever want to create a Unix shell script that you can give to someone else so they can double-click it and run it through the Mac OS X Finder, all you have to do is (a) name the file with the ".command" extension and (b) make it executable. So, just name your Mac/Unix script like this:

ShowProcesses.command

Then make it executable, like this:

chmod +x ShowProcesses.command

You can also leave out the usual #!/bin/sh part on the first line.

I ran into a situation this morning where I needed to use the Linux find command to (a) find all the MP3 files beneath my current directory and (b) copy them to another directory. In this case I didn't want to do a cp -r command or tar command to preserve the directory structure; instead, I wanted all of the files to end up in the same directory (so I could easily import them into iTunes).

Since I can never remember this, JAVA_HOME on a Mac OS X system is located here:

/Library/Java/Home

I believe this is correct for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7 systems.

(This is most likely the shortest blog post I've ever written. :)

I just took a brief look at Ruby Appscript as a potential replacement for AppleScript on Mac OS X. So far it looks promising, and works on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) just fine.

The hardest part about working with it yet has been finding a few examples to get going with. Based on my forty-five minutes of working with it just now, here are a couple of quick Ruby Appscript examples that might help get you going a little faster.

Mac OS X crontab FAQ: How do I run a Unix job (or shell script) through the OS X crontab facility? I keep trying to edit my Mac crontab file, but my Mac OS X system won't save my crontab changes, or run my program (or shell script).

Mac OS X - crontab, launchd, and launchctl

As of this writing (updated in 2011), the Mac crontab command seems to be deprecated on Mac OS X, and the Apple documentation encourages you to use their "Mac launchd" facility. Here's a blurb from the Mac OS X crontab man page: