Forcing Spotlight to index dot directories (& contents thereof)

Try doing a Find from a Finder window and in the pulldown menu that says "Kind", select "System Files" and set the adjacent pulldown to "are included". Unless something's different about my system, you should find that you can now search in the hidden directories.

An alternative is the freeware EasyFind which can also be set to show invisible files and directories.

Hope this helps.

Actually you can search things that are simply hidden, such as /private. Just go there using the "Go To Folder" item in the Finder's Go menu, or use the open command in Terminal, or make aliases to all the ones you want to quickly open and double click the alias (this is what I have done). So open /private, and hit Command-F, then click "private" in the Search window toolbar, and set your seach. For instance, if I do that and select Name:contains:make, I instantly get two files listed

/private/var/yp/Makefile.main
/private/var/yp/Makefile.yp

The problem is that searching for content in pretty much any of those places is basically fruitless, because all, or nearly all, the files are things that do not have mdimporters (and why a perfectly ordinary plain text file isn't handled, just because it doesn't have a .txt extension, when Finder itself can identify the file as plain text, well, I'm at a loss to understand that). Whether the files would be indexed at to content if there were an mdimporter for them, I just don't know.

You can do the same sort of thing with dot folders: open it by "Go to" or with an open command, then hit Command-F to bring up the search window. But again you will be able to search by name, even date, but the content searches won't work. In this case I happen to know that the items are not actually handled by their mdimporters, even when there is an mdimporter. The only information available to spotlight is the basic file system information, name, extension, size and dates.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

this works but only if you open the folder where you are searching first.

I thought that is what I said. If I wasn't clear I'm sorry. Yes, you need to open the folder then do the search. I also tried a further experiment with a dot folder. I used this command to see if I could get the files in a sub-folder processed:

NoobiX:~ francine$ mdimport /Users/francine/.thumbnails/normal/

It seemed to work: when I did an mdls on one of the pngs I got more than just basic file system information I had seen before running mdimport. Indeed, got the pixel height and width, orientation, type tree, color space, and so on. However, when I went to do a Spotlight search none of those content items brought up any results. Disappointing!
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Francine Schwieder wrote:

this works but only if you open the folder where you are searching first.

I thought that is what I said. If I wasn't clear I'm sorry.

no, you were quite clear - I didn't mean to imply you weren't. I was just stressing that with your method one has to open the exact folder you are searching first. that's a VERY serious limitation IMO and I wish there was a way around it but AFAIK, there isn't.

Yes, you need to open the folder then do the search. I also tried a further experiment with a dot folder. I used this command to see if I could get the files in a sub-folder processed:

NoobiX:~ francine$ mdimport /Users/francine/.thumbnails/normal/

It seemed to work: when I did an mdls on one of the pngs I got more than just basic file system information I had seen before running mdimport. Indeed, got the pixel height and width, orientation, type tree, color space, and so on. However, when I went to do a Spotlight search none of those content items brought up any results. Disappointing!

exactly! I usually really hate recommending spotlight alternatives like EasyFind but in this case I don't see any other option. unless someone knows how to coerce spotlight to do this?

Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Should I file a bug on this?

By all means! It is absurd that the mdimporter will work, that mdls will return the results, but that there is no way to get Spotlight to look at 'em. But then I have been VERY disappointed with the "improved" Spotlight. I could get Tiger's version to work better for everything I wanted to do. Sometimes it was a bit messy to get there, but you COULD get there. Leopard's version has been crippled in all sorts of unbelievable ways.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

this works but only if you open the folder where you are searching first. AFAIK, there is no way at all to include dot directories in a global spotlight search.