Launching Terminal.app in the working directory

Question

I have set up a script that launches the terminal with this bash command:

open script.command

script.command is a Perl script, and it gets executed just fine. (This may look a little convoluted, but it's the only way I've found to bundle a script with an interactive command line in a regular application created by Platypus.) The only problem is that the working directory of the script is always my home directory, regardless of where the above command was executed. The same also applies to open -a Terminal.

I've tried doing this:

open script.command --args "`pwd`"

which should technically work (using the argument in a chdir), but the argument isn't passed to the perl script (script.command).

Does Terminal have any command line options I'm unaware of?

Answer 1

The method you describe doesn't work because the arguments are passed to Terminal (which ignores them) and not the script interpreter of the script.

---

Instead, you can use AppleScript to make Terminal first cd into the correct directory and then open the interactive script. Replace the open script.command with osascript launchscript.scpt "$PWD" >/dev/null.

In AppleScript Editor, create a script with the following contents:

on run argv
    tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        do script "cd " & quoted form of item 1 of argv & " ; ./script.command"
    end tell
end run

Save as launchscript.scpt and include as resource in Platypus.

This opens a Terminal window that will first cd into the working directory of the main script (the Contents/Resources of your Platypus application) and only then executes script.command.

Answer 2

It turns out, I've overlooked a technique that's far easier.

The main script doesn't have to be changed:

open script.command

And the beginning of script.command now looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use File::Basename;
chdir(dirname($0));

Of course, this only works within the confines of the Perl script, so in more complex cases, the AppleScript solution is the way to go.