Defaults Write Key in Nested Structure

when you're using the command line defaults utility, the easiest thing to do is to read the entire NetworkViewSettings into a record, modify the record and then write the whole record back out to the plist. trying to modify sub-items is possible, but ugly.

If you want to do it in pure applescript, System Events has a property list suite. That would look like this:

tell application "System Events"

set finderPrefsFile to property list file "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist"

tell finderPrefsFile

tell property list item "NetworkViewSettings"

tell property list item "WindowState"

set value of property list item "SidebarWidth" to newValue

end tell

end tell

end tell

end tell

To show the PathBar, the following works:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true

So, by extension, I'd think that you could do the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder SidebarWIdth -int 192

(Note that I changed the type from Boolean (-bool) to integer (-int).