Tip: Setting terminal tab name in Mac

Just a quick tip ...

My development environment tends to consist of a set of terminal windows and a text editor (currently Sublime Text).  Rather right clicking on each terminal tab to give it a name I wanted to set it from the command line.

That way I can open new tabs with Ctl-+, and then keep them organized. By placing the following script in /usr/local/bin

	#!/bin/bash
	#********************************************************************************
	# Copyright 2014 IBM
	#
	# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
	# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
	# You may obtain a copy of the License at
	#
	# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
	#
	# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
	# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
	# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
	# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
	#********************************************************************************
	# Sets name of the maxOS terminal
	usage()
	{
	echo "Usage: `basename $0` nameOfWindow"
	echo ""
	echo "Sets the name of the terminal window on your mac"
	echo ""
	}
	if [ "$#" == "1" ]; then
	echo "setting name of tab to $1"
	echo -n -e "\033]0;$1\007"
	else
	echo "incorrect arguments"
	usage
	fi

view raw setName.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This script can be run to setup the title. For example:

	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:foo robbie$ git clone https://gist.github.com/d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1.git
	Cloning into 'd3bc496f01f6221ec0a1'...
	remote: Counting objects: 3, done.
	remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
	remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
	Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
	Checking connectivity... done.
	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:foo robbie$ ls
	d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1
	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:foo robbie$ cd d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1/
	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1 robbie$ sudo cp setName.sh /usr/local/bin/title
	Password:
	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1 robbie$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/title
	Password:
	Robbie-2014-MacBook-Pro:d3bc496f01f6221ec0a1 robbie$ title foo
	setting name of tab to foo

view raw usingSetName hosted with ❤ by GitHub

For some other useful tips on using terminal such as setting the theme on the command line check out:

• https://gigaom.com/2009/03/26/terminal-tips-using-the-command-line-with-style
• http://superuser.com/questions/187591/os-x-terminal-command-to-change-color-themes