Backslash "" in do script

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

I’ve got a shell script that works pretty well, when manually input to the Terminal.app, to run multiple instances of an app:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp /Applications/FileMaker Pro 6 Folder/FileMaker Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMaker Pro &

I’m trying to get this into an AppleScript, but the space after the first backslash is coming up as an “unknown token”.

tell application "Terminal"
	activate
	do script "/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp /Applications/FileMaker Pro 6 Folder/FileMaker Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMaker Pro &"
end tell

I need a pointer here, conversely, would it be easier to just run a “do shell script”?

Thanks for your time.
d

#2

From the FAQ

Quotes and backslashes are control characters in AppleScript. Therefore, you’ll need to escape these characters with preceeding backslashes when you write your code. For example…

set theString to ““This is a sentence wraped in quotes.””
→ “This is a sentence wraped in quotes.”

set theString to “This is a sentence containing a backslash ().”
→ This is a sentence containing a backslash ().[/b]

#3

This appears to work with ‘do shell script’ and in Terminal. It quotes the path instead of escaping each space individually.

set scrip to "/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp '/Applications/FileMaker Pro 6 Folder/FileMaker Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMaker Pro' &"
do shell script scrip

– Rob

#4

I prefer to let AS to the heavy lifting using the “quoted form” attribute:

Jon

#5

Running two copies of FileMaker (or almost any app) can cause you grief, since they may both try to edit the same Preference file. This may be a bad thing.

On the other hand, if you have FileMaker 6 and FileMaker 5.5, or some other combination of not-the-same-version copies of FileMaker, they can run concurrently with no problem I have discovered. I’m a database programmer, and have found that running FileMaker Pro 6 and FileMaker Developer 6 at the same time can be very useful. Different version of FileMaker have separate preference files.