Noodlesoft Forums

I was delighted with the help descriptions of how to use Hazel to run an Applescript on each file in a folder. However, I'm confused by using a shell script for the same purpose. Admittedly, this might be due to my own inexperience with shell scripting as I've only dabbled up till now.

In the AS, you use infile as the place holder for the file that Hazel will feed in the applescript. What serves that function for a shell script? Here's the real command I need to run.

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qt_export --exporter=mpg4,appl --loadsettings=exportsettings.dat HAZEL_FILE_GOES_HERE /videos/resultingfile.mp4

So when I write the shell script, what should actually go in the place of HAZEL_FILE_GOES_HERE ?

Since shell scripts can be written in a variety of languages, it depends on the language in terms of accessing arguments.

I'll use 'sh' for this example:

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#!/bin/sh

qt_export --exporter=mpg4,appl --loadsettings=exportsettings.dat $1 /videos/resultingfile.mp4


The first line tells the shell to use 'sh' to interpret the script. In 'sh', $1 refers to the first argument, which in the case of Hazel, will be the name of the file. $0 refers to the script itself, FYI.

I recommend looking online for a shell scripting tutorial. 'sh' is commonly known as the 'bourne shell' in case you wanted something to search on.