How to perform a classic Mac OS search in Tiger

Question

Disclaimer: Apple does not necessarily endorse any suggestions, solutions, or third-party software products that may be mentioned in the topic below. Apple encourages you to first seek a solution at Apple Support. The following links are provided as is, with no guarantee of the effectiveness or reliability of the information. Apple does not guarantee that these links will be maintained or functional at any given time. Use the information below at your own discretion.
In an this post I will describe how to perform a classic Mac OS search and give example results. You may perform the search with or without the spotlight database. This search falls under the smart folder implementation introduced with Tiger. I have done all my testing with Mac OS 10.4.11. I assume this will work with any version of Tiger or Leopard.
The results will be slightly different with a spotlight database on the partition and without a database on the partition. With a database, you will not see Unix hidden files. You may be able to use all of the spotlight special find features. I did not test much with the spotlight special fields. Without a database, using the special features nulls out the search and the "Search for" field seems to give the same result as using the name field.
This search technique was obscured by all the hoopla over spotlight. Authors of Tiger books avoided mentioning the Classic search interface. When I looked in Leopard books I noticed some authors put back information on the Classic search interface.
For testing I created these files
For testing I created a test "z-find" folder on my Macintosh-HD, containing files and folders with various attributes, then copied it over to my Spotless flash drive. This means both searches searched for the same file names.
I put these files on my Macintosh-HD and Spotless partitions.
Here is the list of files:
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2122/3746333451_36daa677f8.jpg?v=0!
Here is the list of files again:
.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
.bash-copy-initial-dot/
    bash-backup-inside-bash.html
    ping_command_as_Give.html
bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery__yellow__4k.html
bash-copy/
    bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
    ping_command-bash-copy.html
bash-copy-invisible-attr/
    ping_command_as_Give.html
bash-folder__green/
    ping_command_as_Give.html
Perform the Classic Mac OS search with a Spotlight database.
{color:red}By Classic Mac OS search I mean a search on the filename and the results shown in list format.{color} How do you get to this interface?
*Click on the Desktop to access the Finder.*
*Click on File then click on Find. (Command-F)*
Pick what folder you wished to search. With Tiger you can click on Others... to select a folder. Click on the plus sign to select the folder you wish to search. Be sure the selected folder in the list is the only one checked. In the first example I picked: /Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/
{color:purple}The "Search for" field on the first line is used for spotlight. Avoid using this box.{color}
*Click on the double arrow to the right of the first option (Kind). Go down to the name field.*
*Change the 2nd pop down field to Contains.*
*You can now search for the contents of a filename.* I searched for name contains: bash-
To see the Classic display format, click on the three line icon which is located on the upper left of the window (list view). There is a small refresh icon on the lower right of the window.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3485/3240587496_741476de7b.jpg?v=0!
This is the result of the search with a Spotlight database:
bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
bash-backup-inside-bash.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery_yellow_4k.html    {labeled with the Yellow attribute}
bash-copy    {folder}
bash-copy-invisible-attr    {folder}
bash-folder__green    {folder and labeled with the Green attribute}
ping_command-bash-copy.html
You can create a smart folder to take you directly to the search panel. Just click on the Save icon to the right of the window near the top. For readers of books, you should look under smart folders.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3498/3239759755_d5ebbefe05.jpg?v=0!
There are some downsides. Initially, the search will find both visible and invisible Mac OS files. However, the search seems to get confused between visible and invisible files when you select the visibility option. It seems to get the visible correct when you use visible but when you add invisible things get confused. Sometimes it will find invisible files and sometimes it won't. I used both the Unix invisible files and the Mac OS X visiblity attribute.
In putting the same search in the upper right-hand-corner spotlight search and in the Search for field, I did not get the same results. The spotlight search returned a 182 items while the with Search for field returned 179 items. The Search for field seemed to miss items in the mail boxes. With the Search for search you could display spotlight results in the classic format.
I did a successful search on my fat32 flash drive.
Perform the Classic Mac OS search without the spotlight database.
If you turn off spotlight indexing on a volume and delete the spotlight index, then Mac OS Tiger reverts to the prior Mac OS search facility. In the preferences for spotlight, you let searching continued on the partition.
Here is what I did:
I installed the spotless application.
http://www.fixamac.net/software/spot/
I use spotless to configure spotlight. Click on disabled indexing then click on delete index files.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3527/3239751839_c760c46628.jpg?v=0!
Spotless creates the .Spotlight-V100 directory with the _IndexPolicy.plist and _rules.plist to prevent indexing on the partition.
I performed the search for files containing "bash-" in the name field.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3430/3240587902_171d8d46c3.jpg?v=0!
This is the result of the search without the Spotlight databases:
bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery_yellow_4k.html    {labeled with the Yellow attribute}
bash-copy    {folder}
bash-folder__green    {folder and labeled with the Green attribute}
ping_command-bash-copy.html
Limitations:
Does not search in Unix hidden folders. That is folders beginning with a period (.) .
Sometimes will find files beginning with a period (.).
Does not find Mac OS invisible files.
Using the special features nulls out the search.
The Search for field seems to give the same result as using the name field.
Related tips:
• More hints by Baltwo
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050501162147222
•Spotlight in Leopard has been enhanced. See these articles for details:
See http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html and my mod to Finder's Find at http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6725932 for what you can change so you can find stuff excluded by the default structure.
• FindAnyFile
"Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver's fast search operations."
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.html
• Use the terminal find command to list files from multiple directories.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ find ~/Desktop/iMac/z-find -iname "*bash-*" -exec ls -dF {} \;
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-batChmod.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-battery_yellow_4k.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/ping_command-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy-invisible-attr/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-folder__green/
mac $
• You can use the Terminal to search the contents of a file.
You need to combine the find command with the grep command. I am searching for the word pdisk where file names containing "bash-" in the directory "/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find". The symbols {} \; are needed after the word to search. See:
man find
man grep
for cryptic details.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ find ~/Desktop/iMac/z-find -iname "*bash-*" -type f -exec grep -bil 'pdisk' {} \;
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
• findfile
"Here’s a simple command-line tool which uses FSCatalogSearch to search for files by name.
usage: findfile -r <volume> <name> "
Here is where to find: findfile.
http://cocoacafe.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/fscatalogsearch/
I am searching file names containing "bash-" in the directory "/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find".
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ ~/findfile -r /Volumes/Macintosh-HD/ "bash-" |\
additional input: grep '^/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/'
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-batChmod.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-battery_yellow_4k.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy-invisible-attr
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-folder__green
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/ping_command-bash-copy.html
Robert
This is the 1st version of this tip. It was submitted on July 31,2009 by rccharles.
Do you want to provide feedback on this User Contributed Tip or contribute your own? If you have achieved Level 2 status, visit the User Tips Library Contributions forum for more information.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: Apple does not necessarily endorse any suggestions, solutions, or third-party software products that may be mentioned in the topic below. Apple encourages you to first seek a solution at Apple Support. The following links are provided as is, with no guarantee of the effectiveness or reliability of the information. Apple does not guarantee that these links will be maintained or functional at any given time. Use the information below at your own discretion.
In an this post I will describe how to perform a classic Mac OS search and give example results. You may perform the search with or without the spotlight database. This search falls under the smart folder implementation introduced with Tiger. I have done all my testing with Mac OS 10.4.11. I assume this will work with any version of Tiger or Leopard.
The results will be slightly different with a spotlight database on the partition and without a database on the partition. With a database, you will not see Unix hidden files. You may be able to use all of the spotlight special find features. I did not test much with the spotlight special fields. Without a database, using the special features nulls out the search and the "Search for" field seems to give the same result as using the name field.
This search technique was obscured by all the hoopla over spotlight. Authors of Tiger books avoided mentioning the Classic search interface. When I looked in Leopard books I noticed some authors put back information on the Classic search interface.
For testing I created these files
For testing I created a test "z-find" folder on my Macintosh-HD, containing files and folders with various attributes, then copied it over to my Spotless flash drive. This means both searches searched for the same file names.
I put these files on my Macintosh-HD and Spotless partitions.
Here is the list of files:
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2122/3746333451_36daa677f8.jpg?v=0!
Here is the list of files again:
.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
.bash-copy-initial-dot/
    bash-backup-inside-bash.html
    ping_command_as_Give.html
bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery__yellow__4k.html
bash-copy/
    bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
    ping_command-bash-copy.html
bash-copy-invisible-attr/
    ping_command_as_Give.html
bash-folder__green/
    ping_command_as_Give.html
Perform the Classic Mac OS search with a Spotlight database.
{color:red}By Classic Mac OS search I mean a search on the filename and the results shown in list format.{color} How do you get to this interface?
*Click on the Desktop to access the Finder.*
*Click on File then click on Find. (Command-F)*
Pick what folder you wished to search. With Tiger you can click on Others... to select a folder. Click on the plus sign to select the folder you wish to search. Be sure the selected folder in the list is the only one checked. In the first example I picked: /Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/
{color:purple}The "Search for" field on the first line is used for spotlight. Avoid using this box.{color}
*Click on the double arrow to the right of the first option (Kind). Go down to the name field.*
*Change the 2nd pop down field to Contains.*
*You can now search for the contents of a filename.* I searched for name contains: bash-
To see the Classic display format, click on the three line icon which is located on the upper left of the window (list view). There is a small refresh icon on the lower right of the window.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3485/3240587496_741476de7b.jpg?v=0!
This is the result of the search with a Spotlight database:
bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
bash-backup-inside-bash.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery_yellow_4k.html    {labeled with the Yellow attribute}
bash-copy    {folder}
bash-copy-invisible-attr    {folder}
bash-folder__green    {folder and labeled with the Green attribute}
ping_command-bash-copy.html
You can create a smart folder to take you directly to the search panel. Just click on the Save icon to the right of the window near the top. For readers of books, you should look under smart folders.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3498/3239759755_d5ebbefe05.jpg?v=0!
There are some downsides. Initially, the search will find both visible and invisible Mac OS files. However, the search seems to get confused between visible and invisible files when you select the visibility option. It seems to get the visible correct when you use visible but when you add invisible things get confused. Sometimes it will find invisible files and sometimes it won't. I used both the Unix invisible files and the Mac OS X visiblity attribute.
In putting the same search in the upper right-hand-corner spotlight search and in the Search for field, I did not get the same results. The spotlight search returned a 182 items while the with Search for field returned 179 items. The Search for field seemed to miss items in the mail boxes. With the Search for search you could display spotlight results in the classic format.
I did a successful search on my fat32 flash drive.
Perform the Classic Mac OS search without the spotlight database.
If you turn off spotlight indexing on a volume and delete the spotlight index, then Mac OS Tiger reverts to the prior Mac OS search facility. In the preferences for spotlight, you let searching continued on the partition.
Here is what I did:
I installed the spotless application.
http://www.fixamac.net/software/spot/
I use spotless to configure spotlight. Click on disabled indexing then click on delete index files.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3527/3239751839_c760c46628.jpg?v=0!
Spotless creates the .Spotlight-V100 directory with the _IndexPolicy.plist and _rules.plist to prevent indexing on the partition.
I performed the search for files containing "bash-" in the name field.
!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3430/3240587902_171d8d46c3.jpg?v=0!
This is the result of the search without the Spotlight databases:
bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
bash-backup.html
bash-batChmod.html
bash-battery_yellow_4k.html    {labeled with the Yellow attribute}
bash-copy    {folder}
bash-folder__green    {folder and labeled with the Green attribute}
ping_command-bash-copy.html
Limitations:
Does not search in Unix hidden folders. That is folders beginning with a period (.) .
Sometimes will find files beginning with a period (.).
Does not find Mac OS invisible files.
Using the special features nulls out the search.
The Search for field seems to give the same result as using the name field.
Related tips:
• More hints by Baltwo
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050501162147222
•Spotlight in Leopard has been enhanced. See these articles for details:
See http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html and my mod to Finder's Find at http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6725932 for what you can change so you can find stuff excluded by the default structure.
• FindAnyFile
"Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver's fast search operations."
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.html
• Use the terminal find command to list files from multiple directories.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ find ~/Desktop/iMac/z-find -iname "*bash-*" -exec ls -dF {} \;
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-batChmod.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-battery_yellow_4k.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/ping_command-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy-invisible-attr/
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-folder__green/
mac $
• You can use the Terminal to search the contents of a file.
You need to combine the find command with the grep command. I am searching for the word pdisk where file names containing "bash-" in the directory "/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find". The symbols {} \; are needed after the word to search. See:
man find
man grep
for cryptic details.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ find ~/Desktop/iMac/z-find -iname "*bash-*" -type f -exec grep -bil 'pdisk' {} \;
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
• findfile
"Here’s a simple command-line tool which uses FSCatalogSearch to search for files by name.
usage: findfile -r <volume> <name> "
Here is where to find: findfile.
http://cocoacafe.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/fscatalogsearch/
I am searching file names containing "bash-" in the directory "/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find".
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
mac $ ~/findfile -r /Volumes/Macintosh-HD/ "bash-" |\
additional input: grep '^/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/'
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-backup-copy-initial-dot-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup-copy-invisible-attr.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-backup.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-batChmod.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-battery_yellow_4k.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy-invisible-attr
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-folder__green
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/.bash-copy-initial-dot/bash-backup-inside-bash.ht ml
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/bash-backup-inside-bash-copy.html
/Users/mac/Desktop/iMac/z-find/bash-copy/ping_command-bash-copy.html
Robert
This is the 1st version of this tip. It was submitted on July 31,2009 by rccharles.
Do you want to provide feedback on this User Contributed Tip or contribute your own? If you have achieved Level 2 status, visit the User Tips Library Contributions forum for more information.