Scripting a sequential workflow in OSX

Question

I currently have a workflow which relies on several bash commands sequentially in the OSX terminal. It is basically a process which starts with a file x.csv, it does an operation on it and generates another file y.dat. Then uses y.dat as input for another command line app and produces the output z.png.

I want to write a script to automate the procedure with a script that takes in x and produces z directly. I don't know how to do it, or if to use AppleScript or bash and how.

Thanks

Answer 1

In bash you can use a pipe i.e. | to pass the output of one command as the input of the next.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO-4.html

Answer 2

I used the tutorial in http://floppix.ccai.com/scripts1.html to get started. That is all I needed. I execute a command and use a variable to store the filename of the output. I then execute the next command passing the filename of the previous stage as a parameter.