Chapter 23. Unix

AppleScript is a powerful way to get information and to make things happen through scripting on Mac OS X—but it's not the only way. Mac OS X is Unix, and comes with many Unix command-line tools, along with scripting languages such as Perl and Ruby. AppleScript and Unix are different worlds, but there's a communicating door between them, and it's open in both directions: you can call into the Unix shell from within AppleScript code, and you can call AppleScript from the Unix command line. That means you can combine the power of Unix with the power of AppleScript. This chapter talks about how to do it; see also Section 2.7.