[OT] Spotlight and Tiger

[Andre Garzia]

Stephen,

spotlight is a very powefull feature. The lag you see is that it  
appears that spotlight needs to load its database on first  
interaction, so your first search after boot is always granted with a  
little beach ball, the next ones will be quicker, I promisse (the  
thing should load its database on boot and not on first use I  
think...). If you don't care do use some of MacOS X Unix powers, then  
read on for a little recipe!!!!

-- function that searches spotlight based on filename.
function mdFindFilesbyName pFilename
   put format("mdfind %s | grep -i %s", pFilename, pFilename) into  
tShellCMD
   get shell(tShellCMD)
   return it
end mdFindFilesbyName

This little function will search spotlight for the pattern you said  
was the filename and grep will filter the lines for the filename.  
With mdfind you can do boolean searches like search for something and  
somethingelse and not someotherthing... you can do many cool things  
with mdfind and if you use pipes for grep, tr, awk... you have a  
killer toolkit!!!!

Always Remember, MacOS X is a Unix and Pipes are your Friend! :-D

the mdfind command line tool might be what you're looking for. You  
can build a nice GUI for it in Rev if you want.
a Good resource on mdfind is http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/ 
2006/01/04/mdfind.html

Cheers
andre

PS: I love spotlight, but I'd rather have full blown BFS like queries.


On Mar 15, 2006, at 5:07 PM, Stephen Barncard wrote:

> Does anyone here know about a way to turn off all Spotlight  
> activity and replace it with the the Panther style search?
>
> I really, really HATE Spotlight. I just want to search filenames,  
> not the content. In spotlight I get way more hits than I need. I  
> design all my filenames to tell me all I need to know.
>
> I also hate the way it anticipates my typing, as it blocks any  
> other activity, and if you make a mistake, one is faced with the  
> dreaded spinning beachball until it is ready. Finally there are  
> hardly any adjustments in its panel to turn any of this behavior  
> off. This thing blows so many HUI guidlines it's not funny.
>
> Is anyone else annoyed with this horrible 'feature' of an otherwise  
> great OS?
>
>
> sqb
> -- 
> stephen barncard
> s a n  f r a n c i s c o
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