06-05-2009, 12:49 PM

This is a bit hard to explain without visuals, but I'm going to do my best.

Suppose I have a folder called "Animals" and a folder called "Things I Like".

Inside the "Things I Like" folder is a folder called "Dogs".

Inside the "Animals" folder is an alias to the "Dogs" folder.

Also suppose the "Dogs" folder contains a file called "Poodles.jpg" So I have:

Things I Like-->Dogs-->Poodles.jpg
Animals-->Alias to Dogs-->Poodles.jpg

When I search the "Dogs" folder, it finds "Poodles.jpg". However, when I search the "Animals" folder, it does NOT find "Poodles.jpg".

Is there a way to make it find the file when searching "Animals" as well. In other words, can I make it search a folder AND any folders that there is an alias to?

I hope I explained that coherently. It's a bit hard to put into words.

06-05-2009, 12:57 PM

Aliases aren't folders, they're files (sort of). So, when searching, you can't search a folder with aliases and expect to find where those aliases point.

Perhaps this would be an interesting read.

06-05-2009, 04:18 PM

I'm not sure how Spotlight or the Finder handles that case. It may be that it recognizes that you have found the same file via a different path and simply not list it, assuming both top levels are below an initial search path. My limited experiment got me no where actually.

It would be possible to write a unix script to do what you want. That would take a lot of work. Hint; look at the mdls command for starters.