Open a terminal window to a specified folder from a Cocoa app.

Question

I have seen this thread on how to execute terminal commands from within a Cocoa app. But I want to actually launch Terminal.app to a specified directory.

I know that the following does not work:

[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openFile:folderPath withApplication:@"Terminal"];

Terminal tries to actually open the folder as a file.

Is this something I have to use AppleScript for?

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Not sure if there's a way to do it in plain cocoa, but in applescript it's fairly trivial

tell application "Terminal" to do script "cd ~/Desktop"

Answer 2

I don't really know AppleScript, but I bet you could use it for this.

If the terminal directory is the same each time, you could just make an executeable .sh file with a cd command in it and make that the openFile argument.

Answer 3

You could use AppleScript from Cocoa like this:

NSString *s = [NSString stringWithFormat:
     @"tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"cd %@\"", folderPath];

NSAppleScript *as = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource: s];
[as executeAndReturnError:nil];

AppleScript script was taken from cobbal. Thanks mate!

Answer 4

The existing answers suggesting using the cd command are great. Additionally, I recommend checking out the source to the app cdto for a great example. Cdto is a fast mini application that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. This app is designed (including it's icon) to placed in the finder window's toolbar.