Apple command file exits early
I wrote an .command
script that when I launch it, it just exits and it's to quick for me to see what's going on. How do I keep it open?
When you double click a .command
in the Finder, the Terminal opens and runs /path/to/your.command ; exit;
The exit
at the end exits the shell, and you have Terminal's preferences set to close the window when this happens.
- Go to Terminal -> Preferences -> Settings -> Whichever Theme is marked as the Default -> Shell -> When the shell exits: and choose "Don't close the window".
Alternatively, if you don't want to change Terminal's preferences:
- If your command outputs something to STDOUT that you want to read after the command exits, you can pipe the command's output through
less
, which will then stay open allowing you to scroll around through the output with the arrow keys until you quit it withq
. Just add|less
to the end of the command in your script.
EDIT:
- Found a more flexible option. If piping something through
less
isn't practical for whatever reason, or your script is too complicated, you can add a last command that waits for input from the user before completing. I used
$ read -n 1 -p "Done. Press any key to exit. "
(Wait for one character of input while displaying the prompt.)