Shell Script for backpack todo lists

Updated December 6, 2023, First Published August 20, 2005 by Pete Freitag

I whipped up this shell script for adding items to your backpack todo list. I've tested this on Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) but it should work on any mac, and most unix operating systems if your using a bash shell.

Ok, to start create a bin directory inside your home directory, if you do not already have one, and make it executable.

mkdir ~/bin
chmod u+x ~/bin

Next create a file called todo, and use the following for the contents:

#!/bin/bash

ADDRESS="pageFunkyName@username.backpackit.com"
SUB="Subject: todo: $1"
echo $SUB | sendmail -f your@email.com $ADDRESS

Put the page email address in side the quotes in the ADDRESS variable. Replace your@email.com with your email address.

Now make sure your todo script is executable:

chmod u+x todo

And test it:

~/bin/todo things

Note that if you want to use spaces, or multiple words you need to put the todo item in quotes:

~/bin/todo "things to do"

Now you probably don't want to type the ~/bin/ part every time, so lets add ~/bin to your path. Start by editing a file called /etc/profile

sudo vi /etc/profile

Edit the PATH variable to include ~/bin.

Note this will add the bin directory to the system path for every user on the computer.

The line may look something like this when your done:

PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:~/bin"

Side note: A better way to do this is by editing the ~/.bashrc files, but they don't appear to be enabled by default on Mac OS X.

Now you can just type todo "something to do" from anywhere inside your shell.