I have an application that I'm creating and would like to run a shell scripts from within it. One of the scripts creates a .plist file, and the other does a patch on a binary file. The reason why want to do this with a shell script is because I know that it works for the two things that I need it for. I'm sure there's a way to do it with Objective-C/Cocoa although I don't know how, so any recommendations on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated
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You mean MacOS or? You can forget that with iOS, tho you can easily create plists and patch binaries directly from obj-c (in the writable directory only).ott--– ott--2012-01-02 21:26:49 +00:00Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 21:26
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Sorry I didn't clarify, it's for OS X.user963395– user9633952012-01-02 21:33:01 +00:00Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 21:33
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possible duplicate of Execute a terminal command from a Cocoa appmmmmmm– mmmmmm2014-09-14 21:32:37 +00:00Commented Sep 14, 2014 at 21:32
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2 Answers
You'll need to use NSTask. NSTask is a system for running any Terminal command. Here's how you could use it to execute a shell script:
NSTask *task = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task setLaunchPath:@"/path/to/script/sh"];
[task setArguments:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"yourScript.sh", nil]];
[task setStandardOutput:[NSPipe pipe]];
[task setStandardInput:[NSPipe pipe]];
[task launch];
[task release];
That would run the command /path/to/script/sh yourScript.sh. If you need any arguments for your script, you can add them to the array of arguments. The standard output will redirect all output to a pipe object, which you can hook into if you want to output to a file. The reason we need to use another NSPipe for input is to make NSLog work right instead of logging to the script.
If you want more info on how NSTask works, see this answer.
3 Comments
Alexis King
@Buxme: You can add the shell script to your project and get the path to it with
[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"scriptName" ofType:@"sh"]. Then just use that path for the first argument, and it should run just fine.
John Militer
Will this cause the terminal to open to execute the script, or will this cause the application in objective-c itself to run the script without opening the terminal?
The easiest way I know is NSTask. It's just like a terminal command from where you can call your bash script.
4 Comments
Peter Hosey
Even better than a terminal command, since you pass the arguments in an array and your program runs the task directly; with no shell involved, you don't need to worry about shell escaping.
Peter Hosey
@Buxme: What do you mean by “obvious”? The user can't tell that you're running another process unless they look in Activity Monitor.