Can I replace characters in AppleScript?

Question

I'm working on an AppleScript to mount our Active Directory Home Shares and I've come up with the following part that looks at the logged in users "SMBHome:" and it gives me the users home share but the slashes are in the wrong direction "\" and need to change them to "/".

So far the AppleScript is:

set username to do shell script "whoami"

set homepath to do shell script "dscl '/Active Directory/CAMPUS/All Domains/' -read /Users/" & username & " |grep SMBHome:"

When run this gives me an output of

"SMBHome: \\\\server\\share\\username"

I'd love to have the next step replace the back slashes with forward slashes and remove:

"SMBHome: \\"

With a final outcome of:

//server/share/username

Is this possible?

Thank you!

Answer 1

There are two approaches to solving this problem. One is to use JavaScript for Automation (either by putting your AppleScript into an Automator workflow and then using a separate Run JavaScript action, or by re-writing the entire script in JXA), while the other is to use the sed and cut command line utilities via do shell script.

Here's the JavaScript approach:

var string = "SMBHome: \\\\server\\share\\username" // this would be your 'homepath' variable
var corrected = string.replace(/\\/g, '/').replace('SMBHome: ', '')

This script uses the built-in JavaScript replace function to match and replace text using Regular Expressions.

On the other hand, you could also use sed and cut in your AppleScript, like so:

set init to do shell script "echo ' " & homepath & "' | sed 's/\\\\/\\//g'"
set corrected to do shell script "echo " & init & " | cut -c 10-"

This uses sed for the RegEx, then cut to trim the first bit of the path from the string.

In both cases, the corrected variable contains the final, modified string. I should note that, while the desired behavior can be accomplished in pure AppleScript, it can be rather tedious.

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply @aaplmath, I actually just found the needed addition which is what you have and it does the job!

| grep SMBHome: | cut -c 10- | sed 's/\\\\/\\//g' "

Thank you for your input!