I recently switched to Mac OS X as my primary desktop operating system after spending over a decade on Linux. Although Apple’s operating system supplies practically all of the command line tools I ...

What happens when you run a Linux command? This simple act can appear straightforward, but many different things can actually occur, depending on whether you’re running an executable program, a shell ...

The first time I played with Zenity, I recognized several potential uses for it. While I'm pretty comfortable with interacting with computers with a command line interface, I know many people are not.

Dungeons, Dragons and Dice—a script that lets you roll those 3d6 and 2d20 that a surprising number of games require. In my last article, I talked about a really simple shell script for a game called ...

Jason Snell recently explained how to use Applescript to automate the popular Twitter client Twitterific. But, with the help of some simple shell scripting, you can also send quick status updates ...

We have the user-friendly AppleScript and now Automator. But long before either of these existed, there were shell scripts —series of Unix commands saved as mini-programs. By learning how to write ...