Shell scripts are basically a bunch of commands, which could theoretically also be entered line-by-line. Shell scripts bundle those commands together.
There are various ways of using shell scripts. For this example, let’s assume our script is called scriptName.sh.
If the shell script file is not set to be executable, navigate to the directory of the script, and run
./scriptName.sh
If the shell script is executable, navigate to the directory of the script and run
scriptName.sh
A script can be changed to be executable by using
chmod +x scriptName.sh
An executable shell script can also be moved to a directory which is in your PATH – which means “this is where ready-to-run programs live”. To see which directories are in your PATH, enter
echo $PATH
Choose an appropriate directory, and move the shell script there.
A third way of using a shell script is assigning an alias. To find out where to assign an alias, you need to know which shell you’re running:
The Shell is the user interface your Terminal uses in order to control the computer (here, we are talking about he command line, but for example the Finder in macOS is also a kind of Shell). There are various common command line shells. To find out wich shell you’re using, run
echo $0
Common shells are zsh and bash.
Depending on the shell you’re running, you will need to edit the file .zshrc or .bash_profile (both those files are invisible files found in your user folder).
If the respective file does not exist, it needs to be created.
Within the file, an alias can be added like this:
alias myFavoriteShellScript="/Users/USERNAME/code/scriptName.sh"
Make sure to use the acutual location of the script, as well as the proper user name. The full path to a file is easily retrieved (on macOS) using cmd-option-C
If we were to add an alias for normalizeAll.sh, this would be enough:
alias normall='/Users/USERNAME/code/_AdobeTypeTools/shell-scripts/normalizeAll'
Note that the user name and location of the shell script will differ on a per-machine basis.