Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Searching for and Locating Files

Mac OS X gives you five ways to find files—two easy-to-use methods through the Finder, and three more as Unix commands you can invoke through the Terminal.

Searching from the Finder

As shown earlier in Figure 2-1, the Finder’s toolbar sports a Search field, which was added to the Finder in Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), replacing Sherlock’s old system search functionality. The Search field in Panther has been enhanced to allow you to search in the following places:

• On any local disks mounted on your system, including external drives

• Within your Home folder

• Within a selected disk or folder

• Everywhere on the system, including all three previously mentioned locations

To change the location of the search, click on the magnifying glass at the left edge of the Search field, and then select the location where you’d like to conduct your search. Your choices of places where you can search include:

Local disks

Searches through all the disks attached to your Mac, including hard disks, CDs, DVDs, FireWire, and USB drives.

Home

Searches for files located in your Home folder and any of the folders within, including the Desktop, Documents, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public, and Sites folders.

Selection

Use this option if you’ve selected a folder or disk volume in the Finder and just want to search the contents of a folder or volume.

Everywhere

Selecting this option forces the Finder to search not only through your hard drive, but also through any other volume mounted ...