Whenever you do POSIX path in an applescript and you want to pass the results to something you do from the shell, you need to escape it. The way to do that is with the "quoted form of" recipe. Beyond that the original script is dangerous since it evaluates the unescaped path which could have commands in it.

Anyway here is an improved script that also fixes that mistake.

# cd's to frontmost window of Finder
cdh() {
        eval cd `osascript -e '
try
        tell application "Finder"
                quoted form of POSIX path of (target of window 1 as alias)
        end tell
on error
        "."
end try
'`
}

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Since this uses the form "``" instead of just `` that aspect of the original script is okay. No word splitting etc happens in that case. For example:

$ echo 'foo  bar'
foo  bar
$ echo `echo 'foo    bar'`
foo bar
$ echo "`echo 'foo    bar'`"
foo    bar

So it is not incorrect, nor is it dangerous precisely because it DOES not do an eval. I feel pretty dumb now.

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