os.execute command

Developer's Corner Scene Scripting
1

I am trying to work with this command and experiencing some difficulty.

I am trying to control iTunes at the command line. I have no problem working with the commands or getting vera to execute the instructions from her command line.

this works at the command line:

ssh -y -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa root@192.168.1.9 ‘osascript -e “tell application "iTunes" to pause”’

I believe I have a lack of understanding of the os.command capabilities

I’m trying to use osascript like this (and I have been able to execute other commands with os.execute):

os.execute(“ssh -y -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa root@192.168.1.9 ‘osascript -e “tell application "iTunes" to pause”’”)

os.execute does not seem to like those single or double quotation marks.

Anyone know how to do this?

2

When dealing with escaping special characters it’s best to work from the inside out.

You want this command to go to osascript:

tell application "iTunes" to pause

It’s being evaluated by a Bourne shell, which requires quotes to be escaped by backslashes:

osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\" to pause"

This is put in the middle of an os.execute() call, which takes a Lua string. Lua strings have to escape double quotes and backslashes with backslashes:

os.execute("ssh -y -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa root@192.168.1.9 'osascript -e \"tell application \\\"iTunes\\\" to pause\"'")

Or something like that. Normally I just mess with backslashes until it works.

3

thanks, that did it.

I thought that I had managed all that at the command line, but to your point, another shell to get through.

Now that I have the ability to do TTS over AirPlay, I’m trying to get this to behave nicely with iTune (e.g. pause the music (if it is playing) and start it back up after the message plays).

I’m sort of impressed with applescript. I surprised there isn’t much chatter on this board trying to get Vera to squeeze things out of a mac.

I’m afraid that by the time I get everything in there that I want, I’ll have an AirPlay plugin for OSX…