terminal

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.

Mac OS X debug FAQ: Help, I'm having a problem with [fill in the blank] on my Mac OS X system, how do I troubleshoot it?

I just ran into a problem when trying to create a Safari web clip dashboard widget, where the web clip isn't properly updating itself, and I stopped for a moment to think about how to troubleshoot/debug this Mac OS X problem. That's when I thought, "Okay, a Mac is a Unix system, check the log files." So I cracked open a Mac Terminal window, and checked the system log file:

Mac Unix shell AppleScript FAQ: How can I display a dialog with AppleScript from the Unix command line shell? (Either from a command line shell like bash through the Mac OS X Terminal, or from a shell crontab job.)

AppleScript Unix Terminal FAQ: How can I run an AppleScript script from the Mac Unix terminal (Unix command line)?

A cool thing about Mac OS X is that you can run AppleScript programs from the Unix shell. (Well, I guess it's cool if you're a Unix user, and I am.)

Running an AppleScript program from the Unix shell turns out to be surprising easy. For instance, if my current working directory has a script named OpenUrls.scpt in it, I can run that script from the command line like this:

Working on my Mac OS X system, when I use the ls command on a remote system, that system is configured to show blinking text for all files ending with the ".sh" filename extension. If you've ever had to look at blinking text when trying to read output from an ls command you know that can be really annoying. (Is there ever a time that blinking text isn't annoying?)

So, to disable blinking text in the Mac OS X Terminal application just follow these steps: