What to use for a FIND command?

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bdmsb


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You may find my reply exasperating. On the one hand I want more control over my computer, on the other hand I don't want to run it (or search) with a command line interface anymore! To me, this doesn't seem like too much to ask.

But the new format of the command you suggest gives me a lot of hits not found by EasyFind. Dozens of hits in fact. Most of them are "Permission denied" on files that don't seem to be ".vcf" files. This is the kind of result that makes a Terminal query seem excessively cumbersome. Here's the beginning of the results:

MacPro:~ bryan$ find / -name "*.vcf" -print
find: /.Spotlight-V100: Permission denied
find: /.Trashes: Permission denied
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/de.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/es.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/fr.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/it.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/ja.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/nl.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
find: /Library/Logs/Console/502: Permission denied
find: /private/etc/cups/certs: Permission denied
find: /private/var/backups: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/dhcpclient: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/netinfo/local.nidb: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/openldap/openldap-data: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/openldap/openldap-slurp: Permission denied
..... for several more screens .....
 
cwa107

cwa107


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bdmsb said:
You may find my reply exasperating. On the one hand I want more control over my computer, on the other hand I don't want to run it (or search) with a command line interface anymore! To me, this doesn't seem like too much to ask.

But the new format of the command you suggest gives me a lot of hits not found by EasyFind. Dozens of hits in fact. Most of them are "Permission denied" on files that don't seem to be ".vcf" files. This is the kind of result that makes a Terminal query seem excessively cumbersome. Here's the beginning of the results:

MacPro:~ bryan$ find / -name "*.vcf" -print
find: /.Spotlight-V100: Permission denied
find: /.Trashes: Permission denied
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/de.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/es.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/fr.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/it.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/ja.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
/Applications/OmniOutliner.app/Contents/Resources/nl.lproj/Older Release Notes.oo3/The Omni Group.vcf
find: /Library/Logs/Console/502: Permission denied
find: /private/etc/cups/certs: Permission denied
find: /private/var/backups: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/dhcpclient: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/netinfo/local.nidb: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/openldap/openldap-data: Permission denied
find: /private/var/db/openldap/openldap-slurp: Permission denied
..... for several more screens .....
Click to expand...

You're getting permission denied because you're running the command under a limited account. To run it as an admin, preface the command with sudo. You'll be prompted for your administrator password and then it will touch every file, regardless of the degree of sensitivity.
 
cwa107

cwa107


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bdmsb said:
Yep, that works. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Oh, and to answer your other question - yes, it should be easier than this to get Spotlight to actually do a full search, other than just searching its own index. I had hoped that with Leopard, they would have enable an "advanced search" mode, and to some extent they did - but it's still pretty cumbersome to use.

I still use EasyFind, but I haven't ever done a search with it (given that I specified hidden and system files) that didn't return what I was looking for.
 

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