Spotlight created:today and mdfind

Question

Level 1

40 points

Spotlight created:today and mdfind

Reading various sites and "OS X missing manual" I was lead to believe that typing

created:today

in spotlight should produce all files created today. This however does not work for me in Snow Leopard.

Even more if you try

$ mdfind -interpret "created:today"

from the command line you get:

Failed to create query for '( || || (kMDItemCreationDate = "today*"cdw))'.

However, the following does work:

created:10/09/09

Note also that the short date format has to be typed as it is defined in your system date format preferences (which for Canada is set to yy-mm-dd which is completely wrong. We don't write dates like that here, but that's another topic altogether).

So, anyone got any ideas why symbolic today doesn't work in created:today?

Mac Pro, 8 Core, 32 GB RAM, nVidia Ge 8800 GT, 2 TB storage, 30'' Cinema Display, Mac OS X (10.6.1), 24'' iMac, 13'' Aluminum Macbook 2.0 GHz, 3G iPhone

Posted on Oct 9, 2009 6:28 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 11, 2009 1:51 AM in response to MarioGrgic

mdfind 'kMDItemFSCreationDate > "$time.today"'

But what you probably want is something a little more focused.

mdfind -onlyin /User/andya 'kMDItemFSCreationDate > "$time.today"'

which will limit the search to just the directory /Users/andya and all of it's subdirectories.

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Answer 2

MarioGrgic Author

Level 1

40 points

Oct 11, 2009 6:38 AM in response to Nils C. Anderson

That's great. But is the same doable from the spotlight menu? Is there kMDItemFSCreationDate equivalent (supposedly created: is supposed to do it, but it doesn't work).

date:today

on the other hand gives files, created,modified and accessed today.

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Answer 3

Oct 11, 2009 5:37 PM in response to MarioGrgic

Maybe.

One way to do it is as follows. In the finder window, ⌘+f. Then click the '+' sign to the right of the Save button. Click on the pull-down that reads "Kind", and choose "Created date". Click on the pull-down that reads "within last", and choose "today". If you wish to save it click save, give it a name. if you do this search often look for this file in the Finder and drag it to the toolbar.

I'm thinking that the reason that "created:today" isn't working is that to get the entire day is a range. If you step through the exercise above and then look at the file that's created you'll see the following among other things.


InRange(kMDItemContentCreationDate,$time.today,$time.today(+1))

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Answer 4

MarioGrgic Author

Level 1

40 points

Oct 12, 2009 4:27 AM in response to Nils C. Anderson

Yes, I did that exercise before I even posted here. But on the other hand date:today works and if you save the search and open the XML file, you see that date:today also uses InRange operator.

So, there really isn't any excuse other than this is most likely a bug.

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