Name
Searching for and Locating Files
Synopsis
- Find a file when I don’t know its name?
Finder→enter a keyword in the Search field in the toolbar→hit Return to start the search
Finder→File→Find (-F)
- Index my hard drive to allow for content-based searching?
Finder→select hard drive→File→Get Info→click on the disclosure triangle next to “Content index”→click on the Index Now button
Tip
The Finder doesn’t index filenames—only the contents of files. However, you can still search for filenames.
- Where is the content index stored?
It’s stored in
~/Library/Indexes/FindByContent/00001/.FBCIndex.
- Find a file when I can’t remember where I saved it?
Use the
locate
command in the Terminal. However, you must first update thelocate
database as follows:MacChuck:~ chuck$
cd /usr/libexec
MacChuck:/usr/libexec chuck$ sudo ./locate.updatedb
If you haven’t built the
locate
database yet, this command could take a few minutes to run; afterwards, you will be returned to the command line.Tip
The
locate.updatedb
command is executed weekly by default, as noted in the/etc/weekly
file. However, you might want to issue this command shortly after installing Mac OS X.Now you can use the
locate
command; for example:MacChuck:/usr/libexec chuck$
locate temp98.doc
/Users/chuck/Books/Templates/temp98.doc MacChuck:/usr/libexec chuck$In this example, we used
locate
to search for the filetemp98.doc
; in return, the command tells ...
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