Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

On Monday, Oct 20, 2003, at 17:03 Europe/London, Chris Nandor wrote:

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thane Norton) wrote:
One of my personal favorites is to use a "here document" to supply 
the code
for an applescript via osascript.  i.e.

my $script = <<'APPLESCRIPT';
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Hello World"
end tell
APPLESCRIPT

local *script_to;
local *script_from;
local *script_error;
my $pid = open3(*script_to, *script_from, *script_error,
"/usr/bin/osascript") or die "Couldn't open osascript";
print script_to $script;
close script_to;
A much more efficient method would be to use one of the XS AppleScript
methods, including MacPerl::DoAppleScript() in Mac::Carbon, 
applescript() in
Mac::OSA::Simple (requires Mac::Carbon), and RunAppleScript from
Mac::AppleScript.
Also "system('open', )" seems to run a tad faster (?) 
than "RunAppleScript" although it is not AFAIK possible to take Perl 
variables into and out of AS that way.

In passing I suspect a minor bug with RunAppleScript: in the example 
given the Perl script dies even thought the AppleScript succeeds.

Coming back to the original question in this thread: "CronniX" is a 
very nice application which one would be hard pushed to better.

'CamelBones' looks attractive for the kind of GUI one used to be able 
to do so easily with MacPerl. I have not found any documentation apart 
from the three "How To's" on the CB site. Can anyone help?

Alan Fry

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Thane]

I did try and install with CPAN (CPAN.pm version 1.76).

On 10/20/03 10:23 AM, "Chris Nandor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> At 10:02 -0700 2003.10.20, Thane wrote:
>> I had not seen that before.  However, when I went to install it, it failed.
>> I will try again after we upgrade the dev systems here to 10.3 and therefore
>> perl 5.8.  The error goes something like this:
> 
> If you tried to install with CPAN.pm, the prerequisities would have been
> installed (or at least, you would have been asked about them).  See
> Makefile.PL for the prerequisites if you wish to install by hand (I think
> it is only Mac::Path::Util and Test::More, the latter of which is included
> with perl 5.8 IIRC).

-- 
Thane
Thane at crashbox dot com

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Thane]

I had not seen that before.  However, when I went to install it, it failed.
I will try again after we upgrade the dev systems here to 10.3 and therefore
perl 5.8.  The error goes something like this:

Can't locate Mac/Path/Util.pm in @INC (@INC contains: blib/arch
blib/lib /System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl/darwin
/System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl
/System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl/darwin
/System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl/darwin
/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl
/Network/Library/Perl/darwin /Network/Library/Perl
/Network/Library/Perl . /System/Library/Perl/darwin
/System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl /Library/Perl
/Network/Library/Perl/darwin /Network/Library/Perl
/Network/Library/Perl .) at blib/lib/Mac/Files.pm line 1609, 
line 1.

On 10/20/03 9:03 AM, "Chris Nandor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> A much more efficient method would be to use one of the XS AppleScript
> methods, including MacPerl::DoAppleScript() in Mac::Carbon, applescript() in
> Mac::OSA::Simple (requires Mac::Carbon), and RunAppleScript from
> Mac::AppleScript.
> 
>  my $result = DoAppleScript($script);

-- 
Thane
Thane at crashbox dot com

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Chris Nandor]

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thane Norton) wrote:

> One of my personal favorites is to use a "here document" to supply the code
> for an applescript via osascript.  i.e.

> my $script = <<'APPLESCRIPT';
> tell application "Finder"
> display dialog "Hello World"
> end tell
> APPLESCRIPT

> local *script_to;
> local *script_from;
> local *script_error;
> my $pid = open3(*script_to, *script_from, *script_error,
> "/usr/bin/osascript") or die "Couldn't open osascript";
> print script_to $script;
> close script_to;

A much more efficient method would be to use one of the XS AppleScript 
methods, including MacPerl::DoAppleScript() in Mac::Carbon, applescript() in 
Mac::OSA::Simple (requires Mac::Carbon), and RunAppleScript from 
Mac::AppleScript.

   my $result = DoAppleScript($script);

-- 
Chris Nandor  [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Chris Nandor]

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dan Sugalski) wrote:

> FWIW, you can pop up progress bars from perl, though it does require
> turning the perl program into a Cocoa app with Sherm's CamelBones
> framework. (I think the Mac::Carbon module(s?) may do this as well, but
> you may or may not still have to turn the program into an application)

Mac::Carbon (port of toolbox modules from MacPerl to Mac OS X) does not 
contain any GUI modules.  The best you can do is control other GUI programs 
with it.

-- 
Chris Nandor  [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

At 9:48 am -0600 14/10/03, Doug McNutt wrote:
At 00:16 +0100 10/14/03, Alan Fry wrote:
do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"
results in the error:
...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied
do shell script is misnamed as are a lot of other commands in 
AppleScript.  What it really means is

Tell the OS to execute something that has been flagged as executable 
by setting the x bit in its permissions for the user who is making 
the request.

It doesn't matter whether the file pointed to is a shell script or 
not though AppleScript does invoke the bash shell to manage the 
execution and can accept bash commands directly. Compiled C code and 
perl scripts with a #! line are equally executable but you must set 
that x bit. The failure you report is that you didn't have execute 
permission.
Right. JD pointed that out in his message -- but I am grateful for 
the amplification.

Terminal is the easy way. The command is

chmod  777 path_to_file

which actually opens it up completely to anyone. The rightmost bit 
in each octal digit is the x bit for user, group, and world.  man 
chmod for more.

It would be nice if Finder allowed access to the x bit but it 
doesn't. It would be nice if Finder would execute a double-clicked 
file with the x bit set but. . . Steve?Is it possible to write 
an AppleScript to do that?
Expanding James Reynolds idea (13th Oct) a little I have got the 
following to work:

AppleScript (application)
as file 
on open myFile
	set myPath to POSIX path of myFile
	display dialog "File: " & myPath & return & "Set new 
permissions as:" default answer "0755"
	set newMode to text returned of result
	set newPath to do shell script 
"/Users/alanfry/Droplets/PerlScripts/ChangeMode.txt \"" & myPath & 
"\" \"" & newMode & "\""
	display dialog result buttons {"QUIT"} default button 1
end open

Perl script
as file 
#!/usr/bin/perl
my $myFile = $ARGV[0];
my $perms = $ARGV[1];
$perms = oct $perms;
my @list = stat($myFile);
print "File: $myFile\n";
printf "%-32s%o\n", "Previous permissions were:", $list[2];
chmod "$perms", "$myFile";
@list = stat($myFile);
printf "%-30s%o\n", "Current permissions are now:", $list[2];
On dropping any file onto the applet a dialog is put up asking for 
the new permissions (with 0755 as default suggestion). After clicking 
the 'OK' button the perl script changes the mode and puts up another 
AS dialog confirming the full-path file name, the previous 
permissions and the new current permissions.

Comments would be very welcome. I suppose folders should be excluded 
and things like zip disks at the very least. Whether it's any 
improvement on typing 'chmod 0777 ' in the Terminal I'm not 
sure...

Alan Fry

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 10:05 pm +0100 14/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:

 Running a 'chmod' fixes the problem and both methods above now 
work. However I don't seem to need the dot before the path (?) in 
the case where the file is 'executable'.
You will if its not in your PATH.

Compare these three scripts.  Since tmp.pl is not in your path, you 
will get an error with the third:

do shell script "cd /tmp; perl -e '
$f=qq~tmp.pl~;
open F, qq~>$f~ ;
print F qq~#!/usr/bin/perl\\nprint qq(hello\\n)~
' ; chmod +x tmp.pl ;  ./tmp.pl"
do shell script "cd /tmp; perl -e '
$f=qq~tmp.pl~;
open F, qq~>$f~ ;
print F qq~#!/usr/bin/perl\\nprint qq(hello\\n)~
' ; chmod +x tmp.pl ;  perl tmp.pl"
do shell script "cd /tmp; perl -e '
$f=qq~tmp.pl~;
open F, qq~>$f~ ;
print F qq~#!/usr/bin/perl\\nprint qq(hello\\n)~
' ; chmod +x tmp.pl ;  tmp.pl"

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

Tue, 14 Oct 2003 08:38:22 +0100 John Delacour wrote:
At 12:16 am +0100 14/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:

	do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

  results in the error:

	...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied

  The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl'
 however. What am I missing?
You have two choices:

do shell script "perl " & quoted form of 

or, if the permissions are set to executable and the script has the
shebang  (chmod  +x),
do shell script "./Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

for example  /tmp/test.pl reads

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "hello\n"
do shell script "./tmp/test.pl"
--> "hello"
Running a 'chmod' fixes the problem and both methods above now work. 
However I don't seem to need the dot before the path (?) in the case 
where the file is 'executable'.

Many thanks,

Alan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

At 9:00 am -0600 13/10/03, James Reynolds wrote:
This is one way to do it:

on open these_items
	repeat with this_item in these_items
		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
		set result to do shell script 
"/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" & the_path & "\""
		display dialog result
	end repeat
end open
Yippee! I have got this to work, and now, with a few minor variations 
have a nice little applet on which you can drop a 'pod' file and get 
a 'pdf' version in return.

I am most grateful for all the very helpful contributions from so 
many folk in the last day or so.

Many thanks,

Alan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Doug McNutt]

At 00:16 +0100 10/14/03, Alan Fry wrote:
>   do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"
>results in the error:
>   ...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied

do shell script is misnamed as are a lot of other commands in AppleScript.  What it 
really means is

Tell the OS to execute something that has been flagged as executable by setting the x 
bit in its permissions for the user who is making the request.

It doesn't matter whether the file pointed to is a shell script or not though 
AppleScript does invoke the bash shell to manage the execution and can accept bash 
commands directly. Compiled C code and perl scripts with a #! line are equally 
executable but you must set that x bit. The failure you report is that you didn't have 
execute permission.

Terminal is the easy way. The command is

chmod  777 path_to_file

which actually opens it up completely to anyone. The rightmost bit in each octal digit 
is the x bit for user, group, and world.  man chmod for more.

It would be nice if Finder allowed access to the x bit but it doesn't. It would be 
nice if Finder would execute a double-clicked file with the x bit set but. . . Steve?  
  Is it possible to write an AppleScript to do that?

-- 
-->  There are 10 kinds of people:  those who understand binary, and those who don't 
<--

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Pete Prodoehl]

Riccardo Perotti wrote:
"DropScript"

Don't have an url, but I'm sure you can find it in Version Tracker.

Or from my earlier post ;)

  http://www.mit.edu/people/wsanchez/software/

Pete

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[James Reynolds]

At 9:00 am -0600 13/10/03, James Reynolds wrote:
This is one way to do it:

on open these_items
	repeat with this_item in these_items
		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
		set result to do shell script 
"/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" & the_path & "\""
		display dialog result
	end repeat
end open

Save as an application.

And /Users/james/backatcha.pl is:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "I got: $ARGV[0]";


Thank you very much for that suggestion -- it is just the sort of 
thing I was hoping for.

But I have a bug somewhere -- just a simple AS

	do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

results in the error:

	...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied

The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl' 
however. What am I missing?

Alan
I'm not sure.  You might try putting the exact Terminal command 
inside of the do shell script command, like this:

do shell script "perl /Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

or you might make the file /Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl 
executable like this:

chmod u+x /Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl

--

Thanks,

James Reynolds
University of Utah
Student Computing Labs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-585-9811

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 12:16 am +0100 14/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:

 	do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

 results in the error:

 	...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied

 The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl' 
however. What am I missing?
You have two choices:

   do shell script "perl " & quoted form of 

or, if the permissions are set to executable and the script has the 
shebang  (chmod  +x),

   do shell script "./Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

for example  /tmp/test.pl reads

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "hello\n"
do shell script "./tmp/test.pl"
--> "hello"
JD

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 12:16 am +0100 14/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:

 The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl' 
however. What am I missing?
Read my message of Thu, 9 Oct 2003 12:40:33 +0100

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

At 9:00 am -0600 13/10/03, James Reynolds wrote:
This is one way to do it:

on open these_items
	repeat with this_item in these_items
		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
		set result to do shell script 
"/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" & the_path & "\""
		display dialog result
	end repeat
end open

Save as an application.

And /Users/james/backatcha.pl is:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "I got: $ARGV[0]";


Thank you very much for that suggestion -- it is just the sort of 
thing I was hoping for.

But I have a bug somewhere -- just a simple AS

	do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"

results in the error:

	...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied

The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl' 
however. What am I missing?

Alan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[James Reynolds]

At 9:00 am -0600 13/10/03, James Reynolds wrote:

 This is one way to do it:

 on open these_items
 	repeat with this_item in these_items
 		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
 		set result to do shell script 
"/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" & the_path & "\""
This will break if there happens to be a " in the pathname.  'quoted 
form of' POSIX path of... takes care of all that.

What is needed is "perl some.pl f1 f2 f3 f4" so only one Apple event 
is needed; the file list can be build as a string and passed with a 
single do shell script call.

JD
How about:

on open these_items
set args to ""
repeat with this_item in these_items
set args to args & quoted form of POSIX path of this_item & " "
end repeat
set result to do shell script "/Users/james/backatcha.pl " & args
display dialog result
end open
Save as an application.

And /Users/james/backatcha.pl is:

#!/usr/bin/perl

foreach $i (@ARGV) {
  print "I got: $i\n";
}
--

Thanks,

James Reynolds
University of Utah
Student Computing Labs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-585-9811

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Riccardo Perotti]

On 10/13/2003 06:03 AM, "Alan Fry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Doug McNutt wrote Thu, 9 Oct 2003 05:40:58 -0600:
 
>

> What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a
> file, extract the path (into ARGV) and do something with the file.
> For instance I have a droplet to decode Base64 -- drop and bingo
> there is the decoded file. And similarly with more complicated issues
> like translating a 'pod' file to 'pdf'.
> 
> Is there anyway one can get back to this functionality in MacOS X?

> ... 
> 
> Can anybody cheer me up?
> 
> Alan

"DropScript"

Don't have an url, but I'm sure you can find it in Version Tracker.

Cheer Up!

Riccardo
--
mailto:perotti(at)pobox.com
http://www.riccardoperotti.com

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[James Reynolds]

FWIW, you can pop up progress bars from perl, though it does require
turning the perl program into a Cocoa app with Sherm's CamelBones
framework. (I think the Mac::Carbon module(s?) may do this as well, but
you may or may not still have to turn the program into an application)
You can fire full-scale .apps off via cron--just dig through the bundle
and find the real executable, and use its full pathname. (No relative
paths, and no invocations via PATH env vars. Cocoa does *not* like that)
For example, to fire off emacs which is living in /Applications you'd
just invoke /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs. You can even
pass in parameters, which'll show in @ARGV for perl programs.
I suppose it'd be possible to build a progress app that took test-style
output (you know, the "18 tests", "ok 1", "ok 2" stuff) from the child
process and did the progress bar while the child did its thing and spat
its status info to its stdout...
	Dan
http://www.ihook.org

I'm working on a similar app but is less functional so that it launches faster.

--

Thanks,

James Reynolds
University of Utah
Student Computing Labs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-585-9811

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 9:00 am -0600 13/10/03, James Reynolds wrote:

 This is one way to do it:

 on open these_items
 	repeat with this_item in these_items
 		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
 		set result to do shell script "/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" 
& the_path & "\""
This will break if there happens to be a " in the pathname.  'quoted 
form of' POSIX path of... takes care of all that.

What is needed is "perl some.pl f1 f2 f3 f4" so only one Apple event 
is needed; the file list can be build as a string and passed with a 
single do shell script call.

JD

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[James Reynolds]

Doug McNutt wrote Thu, 9 Oct 2003 05:40:58 -0600:
At 10:46 +0100 10/9/03, Alan Fry wrote:
I have a MacPerl script I am trying to transfer from OS9 to OSX.
There are two problems: cron
cron needs to point, with a full path, to an executable, That is, 
something with the x permission bit set.  That can be /usr/bin/perl 
with arguments pointing to a perl script as text or it can be to 
the script itself if it begins with a #!/usr/bin/perl line and has 
been made executable with a chmod. Remember that your .login and 
other initializations, $PATH in particular, will not be set up for 
you by cron.

cron can "open" an AppleScript APPL (man open) but if all it is 
used for is to start up MacPerl you won't need it. Except for GUI 
things that involve Finder like drag and drop you'll be better off 
replicating the AppleScript tasks in a shell script. Osascript is 
available for simple AppleScript-like things from a shell.
Many thanks Doug for your comments, which I have carefully filed 
against the day I shall understand what you're saying.

My personal problem is total ignorance of Unix and all its manifold 
works. I have a learning curve to negotiate, to say the least. At 
the moment I am merely chipping away like Fred Flintstone at a 
paleolithic Terminal window, getting nowhere fast.

What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a 
file, extract the path (into ARGV) and do something with the file. 
For instance I have a droplet to decode Base64 -- drop and bingo 
there is the decoded file. And similarly with more complicated 
issues like translating a 'pod' file to 'pdf'.

Is there anyway one can get back to this functionality in MacOS X? 
Experiments with AppleScript have not been rewarding. Sure, you can 
write an applet which will extract the full path name from a file 
dropped on it. But the path is the old Mac-style colon separated 
directory path. What can you do with that?

Even assuming you could translate the Mac-style path to a Unix-style 
path (in AppleScript!), how can you pass the path to a Perl script? 
I have tried "telling" application "Terminal" to do a perl script 
pushing a valid path into @ARGV and then to run a second perl script 
to see what is in the ARGV list. The answer is always nothing.
This is one way to do it:

on open these_items
	repeat with this_item in these_items
		set the_path to POSIX path of this_item
		set result to do shell script 
"/Users/james/backatcha.pl \"" & the_path & "\""
		display dialog result
	end repeat
end open

Save as an application.

And /Users/james/backatcha.pl is:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "I got: $ARGV[0]";

--

Thanks,

James Reynolds
University of Utah
Student Computing Labs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-585-9811

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Dan Sugalski]

FWIW, you can pop up progress bars from perl, though it does require
turning the perl program into a Cocoa app with Sherm's CamelBones
framework. (I think the Mac::Carbon module(s?) may do this as well, but
you may or may not still have to turn the program into an application)

You can fire full-scale .apps off via cron--just dig through the bundle
and find the real executable, and use its full pathname. (No relative
paths, and no invocations via PATH env vars. Cocoa does *not* like that)
For example, to fire off emacs which is living in /Applications you'd
just invoke /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs. You can even
pass in parameters, which'll show in @ARGV for perl programs.

I suppose it'd be possible to build a progress app that took test-style
output (you know, the "18 tests", "ok 1", "ok 2" stuff) from the child
process and did the progress bar while the child did its thing and spat
its status info to its stdout...

Dan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Thane Norton]

One of my personal favorites is to use a "here document" to supply the code
for an applescript via osascript.  i.e.

---
#!/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use IPC::Open3;

my $script = <<'APPLESCRIPT';
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Hello World"
end tell
APPLESCRIPT

# using a "here document" can mess with the debugger line numbering,
# so include a line comment for it
#line 15

local *script_to;
local *script_from;
local *script_error;
my $pid = open3(*script_to, *script_from, *script_error,
"/usr/bin/osascript") or die "Couldn't open osascript";
print script_to $script;
close script_to;

while ()
{
print "result: $_\n";
}
close script_from;
while ()
{
print "error: $_\n";
}
close script_error;
--

On 10/13/03 6:58 AM, "Doug McNutt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I do use AppleScript for that kind of thing. I'll try to find some samples for
> you.

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 12:03 pm +0100 13/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:

 What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a 
file, extract the path (into ARGV) and do something with the file.
You can do this with Applescript (see below, with the advantage over 
a MacPerl droplet that you don't have to watch the thing launch if 
you save it as stay-open

 Is there anyway one can get back to this functionality in MacOS X? 
Experiments with AppleScript have not been rewarding. Sure, you can 
write an applet which will extract the full path name from a file 
dropped on it. But the path is the old Mac-style colon separated 
directory path. What can you do with that?
All this is taken care of.  See below

 Even assuming you could translate the Mac-style path to a 
Unix-style path (in AppleScript!), how can you pass the path to a 
Perl script? I have tried "telling" application "Terminal"..
B*gger the Terminal.  This is not 1975 :-) though I know there are 
some geeks not too far away who behave as if it were.

 So I am stuck -- wondering if things might perhaps be more cheerful 
with WinPerl?
There are some nice features and at least one excellent perl editor 
for Windows, but once you've crossed a few hurdles on the Mac you'll 
be better off than in Windows.on

This script is a demostration that you can run as a proof of concept. 
All it does is open a TextEdit window listing the pathnames of the 
files you dropped on the droplet, but from this wou will see that 
everything is possible.  You just need to get familiar with a few 
basic things in AppleScript and pay special attention to the 
manipulation of pathnames/filespecs -- alias, file specification, 
POSIX file. posix path of  etc.  These have to be right.  Use the 
event viewer in Script Editor to see where you go wrong.

There is also (Sherm Pendley's ??) Perl Droplet for MacOS X which 
does the same sort of thing in a perlier way.

This script has two handlers to create and write out the perl script, 
but these are just there for the demo.

-- save as application (stay-open if you like)
on open _filelist
 tell app "Finder" to set f to container of (path to me) as Unicode text
 set _perlfileMac to f & "test.pl" as file specification
 set _perlscriptpath to quoted form of POSIX path of _perlfileMac
 writePerlFile(_perlfileMac, scriptText()) -- if you dont have a file there
 set _args to space
 repeat with _file in _filelist
  set _path to quoted form of POSIX path of _file
  set _args to _args & space & _path
 end repeat
 do shell script "perl " & _perlscriptpath & _args
end open
on writePerlFile(f, s)
 open for access f with write permission
 set eof f to 0
 write s to f
 close access f
end writePerlFile
on scriptText()
 "$f = qq~/tmp/test.txt~;
 open F, qq~>$f~;
 for (@ARGV){
  print F qq~$_$/~;
 }
 `open -e $f;`" as string
end scriptText

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Pete Prodoehl]

If you're looking for an application that can create droplets very 
similar to how MacPerl did, look at Dropscript:

  http://www.mit.edu/people/wsanchez/software/

Basically, you write your perl script, save it as a text file, and then 
drop in on Dropscript, and it'll make a droplet for you. One difference 
from MacPerl is that it won't show you output to STDOUT, as that can 
only be seen using the Console.app, but if you want to process files, 
create files, or somehow deal with files in a droplet sort of way, I 
think Dropscript will do what you need.

(Yes, I'm a MacPerl user from the olden days. ;)

Oh, check the list archives for other discussions on Dropscript.

Pete



What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a file, 
extract the path (into ARGV) and do something with the file. For 
instance I have a droplet to decode Base64 -- drop and bingo there is 
the decoded file. And similarly with more complicated issues like 
translating a 'pod' file to 'pdf'.

Is there anyway one can get back to this functionality in MacOS X? 
Experiments with AppleScript have not been rewarding. Sure, you can 
write an applet which will extract the full path name from a file 
dropped on it. But the path is the old Mac-style colon separated 
directory path. What can you do with that?

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Doug McNutt]

At 12:03 +0100 10/13/03, Alan Fry wrote:
>What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a file, extract the 
>path (into ARGV) and do something with the file. For instance I have a droplet to 
>decode Base64 -- drop and bingo there is the decoded file.

I do use AppleScript for that kind of thing. I'll try to find some samples for you. In 
the meantime check this out. It is a droplet to replace line ends in dropped files but 
ignore that and have a look at the source.


  (52 kB)

It's not perl but it does show a way to make AS droplets pass filenames and arguments 
to executable shell tools. You should also learn about "POSIX path of" and "quoted 
form of" commands in AS.

> And similarly with more complicated issues like translating a 'pod' file to 'pdf'.

Wasn't that corncob great? I changed the creator code of all .pm's to match, but all 
that is "repaired" in OS neXt..

>Can anybody cheer me up?

-- 

Applescript syntax is like English spelling:
Roughly, but not thoroughly, thought through.

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

Doug McNutt wrote Thu, 9 Oct 2003 05:40:58 -0600:
At 10:46 +0100 10/9/03, Alan Fry wrote:
I have a MacPerl script I am trying to transfer from OS9 to OSX.
There are two problems: cron
cron needs to point, with a full path, to an executable, That is, 
something with the x permission bit set.  That can be /usr/bin/perl 
with arguments pointing to a perl script as text or it can be to the 
script itself if it begins with a #!/usr/bin/perl line and has been 
made executable with a chmod. Remember that your .login and other 
initializations, $PATH in particular, will not be set up for you by 
cron.

cron can "open" an AppleScript APPL (man open) but if all it is used 
for is to start up MacPerl you won't need it. Except for GUI things 
that involve Finder like drag and drop you'll be better off 
replicating the AppleScript tasks in a shell script. Osascript is 
available for simple AppleScript-like things from a shell.
Many thanks Doug for your comments, which I have carefully filed 
against the day I shall understand what you're saying.

My personal problem is total ignorance of Unix and all its manifold 
works. I have a learning curve to negotiate, to say the least. At the 
moment I am merely chipping away like Fred Flintstone at a 
paleolithic Terminal window, getting nowhere fast.

What I miss most is the MacPerl droplet, on which you could drop a 
file, extract the path (into ARGV) and do something with the file. 
For instance I have a droplet to decode Base64 -- drop and bingo 
there is the decoded file. And similarly with more complicated issues 
like translating a 'pod' file to 'pdf'.

Is there anyway one can get back to this functionality in MacOS X? 
Experiments with AppleScript have not been rewarding. Sure, you can 
write an applet which will extract the full path name from a file 
dropped on it. But the path is the old Mac-style colon separated 
directory path. What can you do with that?

Even assuming you could translate the Mac-style path to a Unix-style 
path (in AppleScript!), how can you pass the path to a Perl script? I 
have tried "telling" application "Terminal" to do a perl script 
pushing a valid path into @ARGV and then to run a second perl script 
to see what is in the ARGV list. The answer is always nothing.

So I am stuck -- wondering if things might perhaps be more cheerful 
with WinPerl?

Can anybody cheer me up?

Alan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Alan Fry]

James Reynolds wrote Thu, 9 Oct 2003 08:38:24 -0600:
I have been writing an extremely lightweight Cocoa utility (10 lines
of code about) that displays a dialog box with a barber pole and some
message.  It isn't quite done yet (I don't like the way it looks).
It is intended to be launched by a perl script.
I would be very interested in giving that a try on a 'test-bed' basis 
if that appeals to you.

Alan

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[James Reynolds]

At 10:46 +0100 10/9/03, Alan Fry wrote:
I have a MacPerl script I am trying to transfer from OS9 to OSX.
There are two problems: cron
cron needs to point, with a full path, to an executable, That is, 
something with the x permission bit set.  That can be /usr/bin/perl 
with arguments pointing to a perl script as text or it can be to the 
script itself if it begins with a #!/usr/bin/perl line and has been 
made executable with a chmod. Remember that your .login and other 
initializations, $PATH in particular, will not be set up for you by 
cron.

cron can "open" an AppleScript APPL (man open) but if all it is used 
for is to start up MacPerl you won't need it. Except for GUI things 
that involve Finder like drag and drop you'll be better off 
replicating the AppleScript tasks in a shell script. Osascript is 
available for simple AppleScript-like things from a shell.

 and a progress bar.
That's a problem.
I have been writing an extremely lightweight Cocoa utility (10 lines 
of code about) that displays a dialog box with a barber pole and some 
message.  It isn't quite done yet (I don't like the way it looks). 
It is intended to be launched by a perl script.

The other utility that might suit your needs is iHook:

http://www.ihook.org

--

Thanks,

James Reynolds
University of Utah
Student Computing Labs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
801-585-9811

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[Doug McNutt]

At 10:46 +0100 10/9/03, Alan Fry wrote:
>I have a MacPerl script I am trying to transfer from OS9 to OSX.
>There are two problems: cron

cron needs to point, with a full path, to an executable, That is, something with the x 
permission bit set.  That can be /usr/bin/perl with arguments pointing to a perl 
script as text or it can be to the script itself if it begins with a #!/usr/bin/perl 
line and has been made executable with a chmod. Remember that your .login and other 
initializations, $PATH in particular, will not be set up for you by cron.

cron can "open" an AppleScript APPL (man open) but if all it is used for is to start 
up MacPerl you won't need it. Except for GUI things that involve Finder like drag and 
drop you'll be better off replicating the AppleScript tasks in a shell script. 
Osascript is available for simple AppleScript-like things from a shell.

> and a progress bar.

That's a problem.

-- 
-->  There are 10 kinds of people:  those who understand binary, and those who don't 
<--

Re: Cron & Progress Bar in OSX

[John Delacour]

At 10:46 am +0100 9/10/03, Alan Fry wrote:
 I have a MacPerl script I am trying to transfer from OS9 to OSX.

 There are two problems: cron and a progress bar.

 Regarding 'cron', the perl script is kicked off 
by an AS application, so the problem really is 
how to get the AS application to run at 
specific times.

 The second problem is how to replace the MacPerl Progress Bar in OSX perl.


As to the scheduling, if you're not going to use 
cron or some third party utility to launch the 
application, then you can run the application as 
stay-open with an idle handler such as the script 
below.

As to the "progress bar", I'd need to know what you mean.



property _times : {"06:45am", "12:20pm", "12:35pm"}
property _midnight : "0"
---idle  --uncomment to test

on idle
 set _now to (current date) - (get date _midnight)
 repeat with t in _times
  set _alarm to (date t) - (get date _midnight)
  set _difference to _alarm - _now
  if _difference is less than 0 and ¬
   _difference is greater than -2 * minutes then
   doThis()
   return 2 * minutes --(rerun idle in 2 minutes)
  end if
 end repeat
 _alarm
end idle
on doThis()
 do shell script "perl -e ' $f = qq~/tmp/date.txt~ ;
open F, qq~>$f~ ; print F scalar localtime ;
`open -e $f` ;  '"
end doThis