Open new Terminal tabs from the command line

tab.bash

#!/bin/bash
#
# Open new Terminal tabs from the command line
#
# Author: Justin Hileman (http://justinhileman.com)
#
# Installation:
#     Add the following function to your `.bashrc` or `.bash_profile`,
#     or save it somewhere (e.g. `~/.tab.bash`) and source it in `.bashrc`
#
# Usage:
#     tab                   Opens the current directory in a new tab
#     tab [PATH]            Open PATH in a new tab
#     tab [CMD]             Open a new tab and execute CMD
#     tab [PATH] [CMD] ...  You can prob'ly guess

# Only for teh Mac users
[ `uname -s` != "Darwin" ] && return

function tab () {
    local cmd=""
    local cdto="$PWD"
    local args="$@"

    if [ -d "$1" ]; then
        cdto=`cd "$1"; pwd`
        args="${@:2}"
    fi

    if [ -n "$args" ]; then
        cmd="; $args"
    fi

    osascript &>/dev/null <<EOF
        tell application "iTerm"
            tell current window
                set newTab to (create tab with default profile)
                tell newTab
                    tell current session
                        write text "cd \"$cdto\"$cmd"
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
EOF
}

printf -v args '%q ' "$@", if you want to generate your arguments in eval-safe form. Otherwise, you're inviting bugs -- local args="$@" flattens the original array into a string, and a string can't store array boundaries in a safe way without escaping.

To provide an example:

$ set -- "first arg" "second arg" "third arg"
$ args_flat="$@"
$ args_arr=( "$@" )
$ declare -p args_flat args_arr
declare -- args_flat="first arg second arg third arg"
declare -a args_arr='([0]="first arg" [1]="second arg" [2]="third arg")'

Now, if your goal is an eval-safe string, that would look like this:

$ printf -v args_str '%q ' "$@"
$ declare -p args_str
declare -- args_str="first\\ arg second\\ arg third\\ arg "

What this did is generate a chunk of script which, if parsed by a shell, will evaluate back to its original inputs -- with first arg, second arg, and third arg each still recognized as separate words. This is thus something you could safely append to cmd.

Charles it's unclear to me as to what the correct way to fix this script to avoid vulnerabilities.

Is there a way to "name" each tab?

Hey dude, thank you so much for this. I'm going to be using this a ton. Appreciate the time it took to fork @bobthecow 's work and make it work with iTerm2.

Happy coding!

@bitsofinfo I don't know where exactly it fits up there, but echo -ne "\033]0;${TAB_NAME}\007" should put you on the right track.

Is there a way to "name" each tab?

function tabname {
printf "\e]1;$1\a"
}

then alias tn to tabname and its super fast