Tip: notify long running terminal jobs via Growl

Sometimes you need to run some script or program that will take a long time.

What I usually do is opening a new window, start the script, and then minimize or send to the back that terminal, leaving a small corner visible to serve as a status. I could glance to the visible corner and look for the prompt to see if had ended.

Now, I use this little super simple script (could also be a bash alias, probably):

 #!/bin/sh
 #
 # Runs script, and prints a notification with growl when it finishes
 #

 $*
 growlnotify -m "Script '$*' completed" -s "Background script notification" &
 # --script ends here--

My version is called n, just n. So I can type n update_mini_cpan and have a nice notification when it finishes via Growl.

Test with n ls -la if you want.