Restoring alias pathways and info window comments from OS9 to OSX

[longjump]

Noobie to this forum. Appologies if I’m in the wrong place or rehashing old topic, pls feel free to redirect me. I’m not a programmer but I can do simple code or scripting if I have a syntax reference and/or examples handy.

Recently upgraded from OS9 to OSX 10.4.6. This caused 2 problems that I’m seeking AppleScript answers to:

1. When I was still in OS 9 I did a clone-style backup from one HD to another bigger HD so I’d have more disk space. I had a buttload of aliases scattered among the xferred files, and these aliases stopped working because the orig files to which they pointed were now on a different volume. I could fix them one at a time though because I could still see the pathways to their originals in their get-info windows, and all I had to do was fix the volume name of the originals. Very tedious though.

Now in OS X, the get-info windows for the aliases no longer show the old pathways to the originals, which makes fixing them much more tedious than it already was.
Is there a way to script the fixing of all these aliases (i.e. fix the volume name in the paths to their originals)? And if so, does it need to be done in OS 9, in which case I’m in the wrong forum?

2. I had many files w/ comments in their Get-info windows in OS 9, which are lost in OS X. Any way to do a script to restore those? I assume the equivalent in OSX would be the “Spotlight Comments” field in the get-info window?

TIA
longjump

Model: PowerBook G4
AppleScript: 1.10.6
Browser: Safari 417.9.2
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

[Kevin_Bradley]

@longjump

Noobie to this forum. Appologies if I’m in the wrong place or rehashing old topic, pls feel free to redirect me. I’m not a programmer but I can do simple code or scripting if I have a syntax reference and/or examples handy.

Welcome! And I apologize for your post not being answered more quickly.

Now in OS X, the get-info windows for the aliases no longer show the old pathways to the originals, which makes fixing them much more tedious than it already was.
Is there a way to script the fixing of all these aliases (i.e. fix the volume name in the paths to their originals)? And if so, does it need to be done in OS 9, in which case I’m in the wrong forum?

You can get and set the original item property of the file in the Finder.

tell application "Finder"
	set myFile to file "original file" of folder "Desktop" of folder "yourusername" of....(*you get the idea*)
	set original item of alias file "alias file" of folder "Desktop" to myFile
end tell

Another (sneakier) way of fixing broken aliases (if they broke because they were moved/copied to another disk) is to simply rename your disks. Name the copy the name of the original volume and the current HD to a new name. Aliases that refer to /disk1/folder1/thefile get broken when you copy them to disk 2 because their path changes (to /disk2/folder1/thefile). If you provide the same pathname structure (even if it is on a different disk) the Finder should still find them OK.

2. I had many files w/ comments in their Get-info windows in OS 9, which are lost in OS X. Any way to do a script to restore those? I assume the equivalent in OSX would be the “Spotlight Comments” field in the get-info window?

Sadly, I don’t know of a way to get the comments back, or from OS 9 to X. If someone else does, hopefully they will post.