executing Obj-C/Xcode from command line (osx)

[SiriusA]

[I did a search of this forum but didn't see an answer]

I'm working on Chapter 13 now and I need to execute my code from the command line (in order to pass arguments there). From what I've looked into, I believe that XCode produces an app with each build under {project}/build/Debug/{project}

I've tried to execute this by going into terminal and just putting that project/file/app name, but terminal responds with "command not found."

Can anyone enlighten me on the proper way to execute from the command line?

Thanks!

[rgronlie]

I ran into the same thing. It seems OSX will only look for commands that can be found in one of the locations specified in the PATH environment variable. Even if you are currently in the directory of the app you are trying to run.

If there is a way to get it to automatically look in the current directory I'd like to know how to get it to do that.

To view the PATH variable type

echo $PATH

So you would need to include the path to your app. By default the terminal starts up with your home directory.

So in my case it would be...

'Documents/Development/Programming in Objective-C/Program 13.1/build/debug/Program 13.1'

to run the app directly... or

cd 'Documents/Development/Programming in Objective-C/Program 13.1/build/debug/'
'./Program 13.1'

To change the current directory to the app's directory and then run it.

Notice the command argument is in single quotes (I believe double quotes work as well). If your command line contains spaces in it you will need to use these quotes or the command will be split into multiple arguments instead of the single argument you intended. This could be one cause of the "command not found"

[SiriusA]

thanks, rgronlie!

I do know some basic UNIX commands (very basic) and was able to cd from where terminal started me into the directory containing the executable (/Debug). but when there, I still couldn't get the app to run by calling it directly.

HOWEVER, when I backed up a directory and put in /Debug/chap13.prob8 it executed!

I don't understand what you meant about the PATH variable. When I executed echo $PATH at the command line I got: /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

How am I to use this information?

Thanks!

[rgronlie]

I don't understand what you meant about the PATH variable. When I executed echo $PATH at the command line I got: /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

That was just for a little background information. What that shows you is where OSX will look for programs to execute if you don't specifically tell it where the program is.. as you did by typing /Debug/chap13.prob8

The paths are colon ( delimited so you can see that OSX will only look in /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/sbin, /sbin, usr/local/bin or /usr/X11/bin for a program. This only applies to the command line... not program launching from Finder.

So if you make a handy command line tool you can place it in "usr/local/bin" for example and the program will launch without the need to supply it's path to OSX.

[SiriusA]

cool. much obliged!