String concatenation for a bash script command

Question

I'm trying to write an alias in my ~/.bashrc of this form:

alias a="foo; osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "bar"; baz"

(where bar launches in a new Terminal window, as per this question) but this string doesn't look like it will parse. I tried string interpolation (${str}), but the problem seems to be unsolvable that way.

That's probably `~/.bashrc` (without the underscore). – Dennis Williamson Jul 12 '10 at 20:40 — Dennis Williamson, Jul 12 '10 at 20:40
Oops, thanks. Been working in Ruby too much. Corrected. – Trevor Burnham Jul 13 '10 at 14:44 — Trevor Burnham, Jul 13 '10 at 14:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 20:29

1

alias a="foo; osascript -e 'tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"bar\"'; baz"

answered Jul 12 '10 at 20:29

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

776,304
153
1,341
1,358

Trevor Burnham · Answer 2 · 2010-07-13T14:52:02.440

0

Surprisingly, the string appears to work fine as written. As long as it's on one line, Bash doesn't terminate the double-quoted string the way you'd expect.

Update: As Ignacio points out, the string as written doesn't preserve the double quotes within it. To wit:

# Good:
a="foo; osascript -e 'tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"bar\"'; baz"
echo $a
> foo; osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "bar"'; baz

# Not so good:
b="foo; osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "bar"'; baz"
echo $b
> foo; osascript -e 'tell application Terminal to do script bar'; baz

edited Jul 13 '10 at 14:52

answered Jul 12 '10 at 20:28

Trevor Burnham

76,828
33
160
196

Nope. But it won't quote those pieces either. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 12 '10 at 20:30

String concatenation for a bash script command

2 Answers2