How to close all, or only some, tabs in Safari using AppleScript?

Question

I have made a very simple AppleScript to close tabs in Safari. The problem is, it works, but not completely. Only a couple of tabs are closed. Here's the code:

tell application "Safari"
    repeat with aWindow in windows
        repeat with aTab in tabs of aWindow
            if [some condition is encountered] then
                aTab close
            end if
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

I've also tried this script:

tell application "Safari"
    repeat with i from 0 to the number of items in windows
        set aWindow to item i of windows
        repeat with j from 0 to the number of tabs in aWindow
            set aTab to item j of tabs of aWindow
            if [some condition is encountered] then
                aTab close
            end if
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

... but it does not work either (same behavior).

I tried that on my system (MacBook Pro jan 2008), as well as on a Mac Pro G5 under Tiger and the script fails on both, albeit with a much less descriptive error on Tiger.

Running the script a few times closes a few tab each time until none is left, but always fails with the same error after closing a few tabs. Under Leopard I get an out of bounds error. Since I am using fast enumeration (not using "repeat from 0 to number of items in windows") I don't see how I can get an out of bounds error with this...

My goal is to use the Cocoa Scripting Bridge to close tabs in Safari from my Objective-C Cocoa application but the Scripting Bridge fails in the same manner. The non-deletable tabs show as NULL in the Xcode debugger, while the other tabs are valid objects from which I can get values back (such as their title). In fact I tried with the Scripting Bridge first then told myself why not try this directly in AppleScript and I was surprised to see the same results.

I must have a glaring omission or something in there... (seems like a bug in Safari AppleScript support to me... :S) I've used repeat loops and Obj-C 2.0 fast enumeration to iterate through collections before with zero problems, so I really don't see what's wrong here.

Anyone can help?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I have a script that closes all of the tabs but does not need a repeat loop.

set closeTab to "Stack Overflow" as string
tell application "Safari"
    close (every tab of window 1 whose name is not equal to closeTab)
end tell

See if that works for you.

Note: change "Stack Overflow" to whatever the title name is of the tab you want to stay open.