unix locate command line working properly

danuke wrote:

Yes, I did try the Mac OS Tech. Forum, but when the reply was that they had never heard of the "locate command", I pretty much knew that I was in the wrong place.

I wouldn't read too much into that. While I know about the "locate" command, I don't think I've ever used it, and I first used UNIX in 1990 I think.

Also, as mentioned, the Terminal / Unix Topic area seems to have gone away.

I don't think any such topic area ever existed, at least not since I've been here circa 2007.

On top of that, Apple Support has refused to discuss anything to do with the terminal for years, despite all their touting how wonderful have it for users was.

Apple Support is for consumer-oriented questions. They won't know anything about Terminal.

Spotlight has NEVER been able to find all those files. Not no way, not no how.

I'm talking about Spotlight in terms of the underlying service and database, not the UI control in the Finder. The "mdfind" command will definitely find all those files. If anything, you will have to tune it to reduce the number of hits that it returns because it searches both file names and contents. By default, the UI control will hide any system locations, which are usually the ones you want. It is possible to change that. But if you are looking for a Terminal command, mdfind is definitely the one you want.

danuke wrote:

The locate command is not finding all the files on my iMac even when the database is updated immediately before issuing the command.

For example, it will return the Application and contents but not the Library Preferences or other files under the same name. It used to return every file there was. Was there something changed?

I am unaware of the locate command ever behaving the way you describe. I can't imagine it would ever have a database of all files on the Mac. That would be just huge and quite intensive to keep updated. Apparently, it isn't even turned on by default.

Also, did there not used to be a Unix topic forum or such?

There is the Mac OS X Technologies forum, which you have already tried, but that is mostly AppleScript.

I suggest using the "mdfind" command instead of locate. It uses Spotlight so it should always be updated.

danuke wrote:

I broke down and purchased Find Any File. It located the files that I was looking for before I got into the changing preferences cycle.

Good computing danuke !

danuke wrote:

I changed that and and locate now returns the expected files, but I am also looking into the mdfind as you recommend.

I've been looking more into mdfind too and I'm no longer as confident about it. It is definitely excluding "Preferences" folders in some way. More importantly, I have also been unable to find out what other folders, if any, are similarly excluded. Except for "Preferences" folders, mdfind seems to return result from all of the disk, even deep within places that would never be returned in the Finder.

As far as I can tell, this folder, and possibly others (such as /tmp), have been purposefully excluded from Spotlight. I tried to manually import them without success. Curiously, Finder is able to locate files in these folders, but only if you manually select the folder. Even then, it is not a true Spotlight search as it is only searching the file name.

I'm annoyed.