Starting Terminal from CLI

[jasonvp]

Greetings -

I run OpenMenu so that I can get a pop-up menu when I right-click anywhere in the background. It allows me to start applications quickly and easily; very X11-ish. From that menu, I run scripts that pop open xterms that ssh to other hosts.

I'd like to use another terminal app, like the one included with OS X. I can't figure out how to open Terminal from the CLI. Is it possible? I know the 'open' command will do it, but it'll only open the first one. I need a way, from the CLI, to open new Terminal windows and automatically run commands within them.

Is it possible to do this?

Thanks!

jas

 

[Fragger]

Jas,

You can open terminal by running the command (not surprisingly):

open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal

Your best bet: an apple script that contains the lines

tell application "Terminal"
	do script "command"
end tell

where "command" is something like "ps -aux | grep monkey". Also you can have this call a shell script, if that is more familiar to you. Just use the script editor or your favorite text editor to dream up whatever you want. You can run that applescript you created from CLI using:

osascript scriptname

Good luck,
Graham

 

[jasonvp]

Graham -

Jas,
You can open terminal by running the command (not surprisingly):

Won't this only open the *first* Terminal window? I've tried this a few times and it does nothing if I already have a Terminal window open. Perhaps there's an arg I can throw to open that says "Open *another* copy of this?"

Thanks!

jas

 

[Fragger]

You are correct that would only open the first window, but the subsequent commands I gave you will open a new window for each time you run them. If you run

do script ""

as is, with nothing between the quotes, it will simply spawn a new window (ugly, yes.)

Hopefully the helps,
graham

 

[jasonvp]

You are correct that would only open the first window, but the subsequent commands I gave you will open a new window for each time you run them.

Way friggen cool. Thanks! Just what I was looking for.

jas

 

[jasonvp]

OK, follow-up question. I've whipped up a few AppleScripts to do exactly what I want, and they work great. Now: can I use the same scripts the set the title of each individual Terminal.app window?

For instance, I tried this in the script I use to just open a new Terminal (no command)

tell application "Terminal"
	do script ""
	set title of window to "test"
end tell

But it tells me it can't set the title of window to "test". I'm missing some other step or key here...

Thanks.

jas