JXA: robust replacement for doShellScript

DEVONthink Automation
1

Currently, doShellScript can’t be used in DT menu bar JXA scripts (it is fine in smart rule scripts, though). The handcrafted function below can be used as a replacement for menu bar scripts:

function runShellCommand(...arguments) {
  const err = $();
  const task = $.NSTask.alloc.init;
  task.executableURL = $.NSURL.fileURLWithPath('/bin/sh');
  const argumentString = arguments.join(" ");
  task.arguments=['--login', '-c', argumentString];
  const output = $.NSPipe.pipe;
  task.standardOutput = output;
  task.launchAndReturnError(err);
  const readHandle = output.fileHandleForReading;
  const rawResult = readHandle.readDataToEndOfFile;
  const result = $.NSString.alloc.initWithDataEncoding(rawResult, $.NSUTF8StringEncoding);
  return result.js;
}

The code is inspired by JXA with Require · GitHub
Call the function like so
const result = runShellCommand('cmd', 'arg1', 'arg2', 'arg3')
or
const result = runShellCommand('cmd arg1 arg2 arg3')
The arguments are passed as they are to the shell, so that runShellCommand('echo $PATH') returns the current PATH value. If you need to escape arguments, do so before calling runShellCommand.

runShellCommand is about 10% slower than doShellScript. That is due to the --login parameter passed to the shell. So, if you do not need the shell’s login environment, leave it out to speed things up.

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