Creating a smart folder with Terminal?

What I'm trying to do might not be possible, which wouldn't surprise me at all. What I'd like to do is one of the following:

1. Create a smart folder that contains everything in the "/" folder.
2. Create a smart folder that is populated with every volume currently mounted on my Mac.

Essentially what I'm hoping to do is create a smart folder I can then use as a stack that would contain all the volumes currently located on my Mac. The only solution I've found so far for this is to use the /Volumes/ folder but this doesn't suit my needs as occasionally I get double icons for drives (1 being the alias the second being a private folder). Also it fails aesthetically which is part of the reason I'm doing this in the first place.

If anyone could recommend a solution that'd be great. I figured Terminal was my best bet, unfortunately my knowledge of this form of coding is non-existent and no amount of Google searches could help me.

15" MacBook Pro 2.33GHz, 3GB RAM, 160GB internal, glossy., Mac OS X (10.5.1), 1TB WD MyBook Premium II, 250GB WD Passport

Posted on Jan 15, 2008 7:49 PM

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4 replies

Jan 16, 2008 12:57 PM in response to Doug Stewart

I don't see how either item on your wish list can be satisfied by any of this "smart" stuff. The smart searches/folders are based on queries against the same metadata used by Spotlight - and that doesn't even look at / or /Volumes. Even if the info were available, is it up-to-the-minute enough to really be usable?

If you want to examine the built-in searches as a guide, you'll find them in:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/CannedSearches

Note that each of the items therein is a package, so you'll have to drill a bit deeper to get to the query file. I found that Property List Editor from XTools was a good way to get a structured view of them.

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Creating a smart folder with Terminal?

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