Query Escaping in File Action Workflows

[pwc]

I'm trying to create a File Action workflow to open selected files in Kaleidoscope (a diff tool). There are two steps in the workflow:

1. A File Action, named "Compare in Kaleidoscope", that accepts multiple files.
2. A Bash script that runs "open -a Kaleidoscope {query}"

The Bash script has all six escaping checkboxes checked. There is no option to escape a single quote character, though. As a result, this breaks when comparing files that contain a single quote in the filename.

 

On Twitter, @alfredapp suggested wrapping {query} in double quotes and escaping the double quotes. This broke the workflow, I'm guessing because it looks to the Bash script that {query} is a single argument.

 

Any suggestions on how to get this to work?

[Andrew]

I'm trying to create a File Action workflow to open selected files in Kaleidoscope (a diff tool). There are two steps in the workflow:

1. A File Action, named "Compare in Kaleidoscope", that accepts multiple files.
2. A Bash script that runs "open -a Kaleidoscope {query}"

The Bash script has all six escaping checkboxes checked. There is no option to escape a single quote character, though. As a result, this breaks when comparing files that contain a single quote in the filename.

 

On Twitter, @alfredapp suggested wrapping {query} in double quotes and escaping the double quotes. This broke the workflow, I'm guessing because it looks to the Bash script that {query} is a single argument.

 

Any suggestions on how to get this to work?

 

With multiple files, the {query} is passed in as tab separated. It's best to separate {query} into variables before using the open command, and wrap those with quotes, then pass the two separate arguments as necessary. There should be a few examples of this on the forum, maybe a user can help you out with this as I can't spot one at this point.

[Andrew]

Maybe something similar to this: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1215-multiple-query-inputs/ but separating by '\t' instead of ' '

[Andrew]

Or this may be a better example: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/771-working-with-multiple-selected-items/