Workon Stuff – A Simple Script

This is a simple script I wrote to quickly open a new file from the command line prompt. I have workon as an alias in my shell profile, and I use this any time I want to test a snippet or start a new script, but it can also be used to generate Word documents or Excel files.

#!/bin/bash
#set -x

#Check for an empty argument
if [ "${1}" = '' ]; then
	echo "Provide a file name to create or open a file."
	exit 1
fi

#Check if the file already exists
if [ -e "${1}" ]; then
	open "${1}"
	exit 0
fi

#Create the file
touch "${1}"

#Check for executable file extensions.
if [[ "${1}" == *".sh" ]] || [[ "${1}" == *."py" ]] ; then
	chmod +x "${1}"
fi     

if [[ "${1}" == *".sh" ]]; then
cat >> "${1}" << SCRIPTGOESHERE
#!/bin/zsh
set -x 

SCRIPTGOESHERE
fi

open "${1}"

exit 0

What Does This Do?

This script will create a new empty file and open it in the default application for the file type. If the file already exists, it just opens it.

If the file type is .sh, then the #!/bin/zsh line and set -x are automatically added. The file is also set to be executable.

Caveats

• This script doesn’t create folders. This could be added easily enough.
• The script doesn’t error check itself

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