Search drive in AppleScript?

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Classic Mac OS
#1

Hi all,

I did a quick search of the forum, but didn’t really find a related topic (maybe I missed it.)

I’m trying to write an Applescript that can find certain files (given an input) ANYWHERE on a selected hard drive. I already have the input part and I can get it to match one folder level deep – but it that’s it. I need it to search every file in every folder on the whole hard drive…

I have an idea of how I MIGHT do this using a conditional loop with different “levels,” analyzing the number of folders in each folder and proceeding until it hits zero and then going back through each level – but I would rather not have to write a complicated search function from scratch. If anyone could point me in the right direction or give me some tips, that would be great.

Thanks!

#2

try this, but be prepared to wait a long time

do shell script "find '/Volumes/name of drive/'"
#3

If you want to search by file name, try something like this:

list disks
choose from list (result) with title "Choose disk:" with prompt "" default items {item 1 of result}

set theDisk to POSIX path of ((first item of result) as alias)
if (length of result) is not 1 then set theDisk to (characters 1 through -2 of result) as string

display dialog "Search for this name:" default answer ""

do shell script "find " & quoted form of theDisk & " -iname " & (text returned of result)

You may have permission problems with certain folders, such as “.Trashes”.

#4

In OS 9 (as this is the Mac OS forum) you have:

http://osaxen.com/files/finddocument2.7.html

I can post a vanilla-AS search script, but it could take loads of time (eg, 20 minutes) in a large volume.

#5

BTW, some times you are looking for a file which is in fact in a known (or guess-able) place (eg, prefs dir, apps dir, any dir related to a specific app, etc.). Otherwise (eg, a random name in the hard disk), the better way is allways prompting the user for the location of such “random named” file.

#6

Thanks everyone! I’ll give some of these a try.

I would just prompt the user for a location if that was going to be known, except that the script ultimately has to read a file of hundreds of file names, search for those files and then move them. But if its going to take a long time per search, then I might be out of luck.