How to close a Terminal tab using AppleScript?

Question

I'm using AppleScript to open PostgreSQL in a Terminal tab like this:

#!/bin/bash

function new_tab() {
  TAB_NAME=$1
  COMMAND=$2
  osascript \
    -e "tell application \"Terminal\"" \
    -e "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"t\" using {command down}" \
    -e "do script \"printf '\\\e]1;$TAB_NAME\\\a'; $COMMAND\" in front window" \
    -e "end tell" > /dev/null
}

new_tab "PostgreSQL" "postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres"

Running this script from the Terminal will open a new tab with PostgreSQL server inside. So at the end of the execution I'll have 2 tabs: the first one which was used to run the script, and the second one containing the server.

How can I close the first one?

This is my try:

osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to close tab 1 of window 1"

But I get this error message:

execution error: Terminal got an error: tab 1 of window 1 doesn’t understand the “close” message. (-1708)

Answer 1

You can try something like this:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    tell window 1
        set selected tab to tab 1
        my closeTabOne()
    end tell
end tell


on closeTabOne()
    activate application "Terminal"
    delay 0.5
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Terminal"
            keystroke "w" using {command down}
        end tell
    end tell
end closeTabOne

Answer 2

One way to do it is like this:

osascript \
    -e "tell application \"Terminal\"" \
    -e "do script \"exit\" in tab 1 of front window" \
    -e "end tell" > /dev/null

But Terminal must be configured to close the window when the shell exits.

Anyone has a solution which does not need to do this?

Answer 3

To determine the tab’s window, you can parse the error message you get when trying to access the still non-existing window property of the tab. The error message usually contains the window's id with which you can reference the window.

As your question is 5 years old, I’ll finish my answer with example code that can be run in the Script Editor instead of a bash script which makes it hard to read.

tell application "Terminal"

    -- Perform command
    set theTab to do script "echo 'Hello World'"

    try

        -- Try to get the tab's window (this should fail)
        set theWindow to window of theTab

    on error eMsg number eNum

        if eNum = -1728 then

            (*
                The error message should look like this:
                Terminal got an error: Can’t get window of tab 1 of window id 6270.
            *)

            -- Specify the expected text that comes before the window id 
            set windowIdPrefix to "window id "

            -- Find the position of the window id
            set windowIdPosition to (offset of windowIdPrefix in eMsg) + (length of windowIdPrefix)

            -- Get the window id (omitting the period and everything else after)
            set windowId to (first word of (text windowIdPosition thru -1 of eMsg)) as integer

            -- Store the window object in a variable
            set theWindow to window id windowId

        else

            -- Some other error occurred; raise it
            error eMsg number eNum

        end if

    end try

    close theWindow

end tell

Answer 4

I think the key is to get the id of front window.

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "pwd"
    set myID to id of front window
    close window id myID
end tell

Answer 5

This will close the active tab only:

tell application "Terminal" to close (get window 1)