Java - Expected “"” but found unknown token

Question

I am receiving this error when trying to execute applescript from my java application. The code is as follows:

String script = "tell application \"Terminal\" to do shell script \"/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\\ Extras/user.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend\" ";
ScriptEngineManager mgr = new ScriptEngineManager();
ScriptEngine engine = mgr.getEngineByName("AppleScript");
engine.eval(script);

I get the following error:

Exception in thread "main" javax.script.ScriptException: Expected “"” but found unknown token.
    at apple.applescript.AppleScriptEngine.evalScript(Native Method)
    at apple.applescript.AppleScriptEngine.eval(AppleScriptEngine.java:342)
    at apple.applescript.AppleScriptEngine.eval(AppleScriptEngine.java:313)
    at myTestApp.Main.main(Main.java:25)

Thanks for your consideration.

Answer 1

You need to 'double-escape' the space in the path:

        vvvv
...\Menu\\\\ Extras\...

Answer 2

A guess based on experience... Maybe the escaped space in the pathname is your show stopper.

Try to call a script from a location where the path has no spaces or try to 'double-escape' the escaped space, like so:

"tell application \"Terminal\" to do shell script \"/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\\\\ Extras/user.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend\" "

---

A common reason for strange errors are those whitespaces in pathnames. So it was my first guess, that this causes trouble in your script. Then I remembered that sometimes we have to 'escape escaped backslashes'. This article doesn't explain, why it solved exactly your problem, but it shows how many backslashes may be needed...