Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

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 the locate 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 file temp98.doc; in return, the command tells ...