> Most of you folks on this list are probably way too geeky to find this
> interesting, but I occasionally run across comments in blogs or on
> mailing lists to the effect that this or that command line tool would
> be handy to have in the GUI environment, so maybe it'll be useful for
> some. Personally I rarely run Terminal, but from time to time I want to
> dash off a quick one-line shell command. To do so I trigger the
> following AppleScript from a keyboard command defined in iKey (lots of
> similar utilities should work just as well):

> set frontApp to the name of (info for (path to frontmost application))
> tell application frontApp to set userResponse to (display dialog "Enter
> shell command:" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "sudo", "OK"}
> default button "OK")
> set userCommand to text returned of userResponse
> if button returned of userResponse is "sudo" then
>         do shell script ("sudo " & userCommand) with administrator privileges
>         set commandResult to the result as string
> else
>         do shell script userCommand
>         set commandResult to the result as string
> end if
> if commandResult is not "" then
>         tell application frontApp
>                 display dialog commandResult buttons {"Copy", "OK"} default button
> "OK"
>                 if button returned of the result is "Copy" then set the clipboard to
> commandResult
>         end tell
> end if

> The script pops up a dialog box with a text field where you can enter
> your command. Hitting Return or clicking OK runs the command directly;
> clicking the sudo button prepends sudo to your command and asks for
> your password. If your command returns text, it is displayed in another
> dialog and you have the option of copying it to your clipboard.

> Don't use it to run a command that stays open, such as top.

> I hope someone finds it useful.

> Michael

> --
> <http://globalocal.blogspot.com/>

> "Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
> "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."