I found a python serial modual which gives me all sorts of scripting capabilities that I didn't think of before, I'll report back if I have any success.
You can also easily do serial I/O from perl on the Mac. I have been logging some data from my Arduino with the code below. I based it heavily on a snippet I Googled...
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Device::SerialPort 0.12;
$LOGDIR = "/Users/peterl/Projects"; # path to data file
$LOGFILE = "plant.log"; # file name to output to
$PORT = "/dev/tty.usbserial-A20e1evB"; # port to watch
# Serial Settings#
$ob = Device::SerialPort->new ($PORT) || die "Can't Open $PORT: $!";
$ob->baudrate(9600) || die "failed setting baudrate";
$ob->parity("none") || die "failed setting parity";
$ob->databits(8) || die "failed setting databits";
$ob->handshake("none") || die "failed setting handshake";
$ob->write_settings || die "no settings";
# Send a string to the port
$pass=$ob->write("AT");
sleep 1;
# open the logfile, and Port
open(LOG,">>${LOGDIR}/${LOGFILE}")
||die "can't open smdr file $LOGDIR/$LOGFILE for append: $SUB $!\n";
open(DEV, "<$PORT")
|| die "Cannot open $PORT: $_";
select(LOG), $| = 1; # set nonbufferd mode
# Loop forver, logging data to the log file
while($_ = <DEV>){ # print input device to file
$theTime = `date`;
chomp($theTime);
print LOG $theTime . " - " . $_;
}
undef $ob;