Opening a new terminal from the command line and running a command on Mac OS X?

osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal"
    do script "echo hello"
end tell'

This opens a new terminal and executes the command "echo hello" inside it.

You can do it in a roundabout way:

% cat /tmp/hello.command
#! /bin/sh -
say hello
% chmod +x /tmp/hello.command
% open /tmp/hello.command

Shell scripts which have the extension .command and which are executable, can be double-clicked on to run inside a new Terminal window. The command open, as you probably know, is equivalent to double-clicking on a Finder object, so this procedure ends up running the commands in the script within a new Terminal window.

Slightly twisted, but it does appear to work. I feel sure there must be a more direct route to this (what is it you're actually trying to do?), but it escapes me right now.

This works, at least under Mountain Lion. It does initialize an interactive shell each time, although you can replace that after-the-fact by invoking it as "macterm exec your-command". Store this in bin/macterm in your home directory and chmod a+x bin/macterm:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

on run argv
   tell app "Terminal" 
   set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
        do script argv as string
        end tell   
end run 

#!/usr/bin/env ruby1.9

require 'shellwords'
require 'appscript'

class Terminal
  include Appscript
  attr_reader :terminal, :current_window
  def initialize
    @terminal = app('Terminal')
    @current_window = terminal.windows.first
    yield self
  end

  def tab(dir, command = nil)
    app('System Events').application_processes['Terminal.app'].keystroke('t', :using => :command_down)
    cd_and_run dir, command
  end

  def cd_and_run(dir, command = nil)
    run "clear; cd #{dir.shellescape}"
    run command
  end

  def run(command)
    command = command.shelljoin if command.is_a?(Array)
    if command && !command.empty?
      terminal.do_script(command, :in => current_window.tabs.last)
    end
  end
end

Terminal.new do |t|
  t.tab Dir.pwd, ARGV.length == 1 ? ARGV.first : ARGV
end

You need ruby 1.9 or you will need to add line require 'rubygems' before others requires and don't forget to install gem rb-appscript.

I named this script dt (dup tab), so I can just run dt to open tab in same folder or dt ls to also run there ls command.