How can I write an Automator action in bash with files and folders as arguments?
Question
When I create a Automator action in XCode using Bash, all files and folder paths are printed to stdin.
How do I get the content of those files? Whatever I try, I only get the filename in the output.
If I just select "Run shell script" I can select if I want everything to stdin or as arguments. Can this be done for an XCode project to?
It's almost easier to use Applescript, and let that run the Bash.
I tried something like
xargs | cat | MyCommand
Solution
What's the pipe between xargs
and cat
doing there? Try
xargs cat | MyCommand
or, better,
xargs -R -1 -I file cat "file" | MyCommand
to properly handle file names with spaces etc.
If, instead, you want MyComand invoked on each file,
local IFS="\n"
while read filename; do
MyCommand < $filename
done
may also be useful.
OTHER TIPS
read
will read lines from the script's stdin; just make sure to set $IFS
to something that won't interfere if the pathnames are sent without backslashes escaping any spaces:
OLDIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'
while read filename ; do
echo "*** $filename:"
cat -n "$filename"
done
IFS="$OLDIFS"