Can't do shell script with a repeat with i from 1 to n loop

Try this to avoid having to use the temporary file.

to run argv        set accumulator to do shell script "echo " & (count argv) & " arguments" altering line endings false        repeat with i from 1 to (count argv)                set ln to do shell script "echo 'Argument " & i & ": " & (item i of argv) & "'" altering line endings false                set accumulator to accumulator & ln        end repeat        return accumulatorend run

Your problem appears to be unrelated to the loop, or the use of argv, for that matter. Here's a much simpler test case where only the last do shell script actually returns a result:

do shell script "echo foo"delay 2do shell script "echo bar"

In addition, the following slight change will produce expected results:

to run argv    do shell script "echo " & (count argv) & " arguments > /test.txt"        repeat with i from 1 to (count argv)        do shell script "echo 'Argument " & i & ": " & (item i of argv) & "' >> /test.txt"    end repeatend run

test.txt will contain four lines, like so:

3 argumentsArgument 1: fooArgument 2: barArgument 3: baz

This workaround fails:

to run argv    do shell script "echo " & (count argv) & " arguments > /tmp/foo.txt"        repeat with i from 1 to (count argv)        do shell script "echo 'Argument " & i & ": " & (item i of argv) & "' >> /tmp/foo.txt"    end repeat        do shell script "cat /tmp/foo.txt"    do shell script "rm /tmp/foo.txt"end run

Even now, only the last line is returned. This may be related to the following question of TN2065:

Q: My script will produce output over a long time. How do I read the results as they come in?

A: Again, the short answer is that you don’t — do shell script will not return until the command is done. In Unix terms, it cannot be used to create a pipe. What you can do, however, is to put the command into the background (see the next question), send its output to a file, and then read the file as it fills up.

Alas, I don't have enough AppleScript-fu to know how to have AppleScript itself read multiple lines, which I suspect would work.