When you use a program, you’ll want to know how to control it. How can you tell it what job you want done? Do you give instructions before the program starts, or after it’s started? There are several general ways to give commands on a Mac OS X system. It’s good to be aware of them.
Some programs work only within the graphical window environment (on
Mac OS X, this is called Aqua). On Mac OS X, you can run these
programs using the open
command. For instance,
when you type open -a Chess
at a shell prompt, the
chess game starts. It opens one or more windows on your screen. The
program has its own way to receive your commands — through menus
and buttons on its windows, for instance. Although you
can’t interact with these programs using traditional
Unix utilities, Mac OS X includes the osascript
utility, which lets you run AppleScript commands from the Unix shell.
You’ve also seen in Section 1.2 that you can enter many Unix commands at a shell prompt. These programs work in a window system (from a Terminal window) or from any terminal. You control those programs from the Unix command line — that is, by typing options and arguments from a shell prompt before you start the program. After you start the program, wait for it to finish; you generally don’t interact with it.
Some Unix programs that work in the terminal window have commands of their own. (If you’d like some examples, see Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.) These programs may accept options and arguments on their command lines. But, once you start a program, it prints its own prompt and/or menus, and it understands its own commands; it takes instructions from your keyboard that weren’t given on its command line.
For instance, if you enter ftp
at a shell prompt,
you’ll see a new prompt from the
ftp
program. Enter FTP commands to transfer files
to and from remote systems. When you enter the special command
quit
to quit the ftp
program,
ftp
will stop prompting you. Then
you’ll get another shell prompt, where you can enter
other Unix commands.
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