I've searched both SE and the web, but haven't found an answer to this.
Is it possible to get/set a file comment on OSX (Sierra) in python3? I guess more accurately — is it possible to do so directly, without having to invoke mdls?
Context: I have a list of transient files that have comments on them. The files come and go, but when the come back, they'll have the same filename. I want to preserve the comments so I can re-put the comment on the files if the files are deleted and re-added. I'm going to create a python script that would output a list of file,comments, and another script that would read that list and put the comments on the associated files.
I can do everything except the actual getting/setting of the comment, and I haven't been able to find anything on if that can be done directly from python3, and if so, how.
Thanks!
Related
Although we don't need it much but still if we want to know the original file, how would we do that?
How can we find the original file in case we create several hard links to a file?
I assume that you are talking about hard links in a POSIX file system.
You can't. As far as the file system is concerned, the hard links are indistinguishable.
OK. Maybe if you created the hard links via a shell, the commands might be in the shell history. Or the information might be in log files. Or possibly audit files ... if auditing is enabled. But not normally.
I need to copy a folder from one location to another while providing my users with a progress bar.
The only appropiate API that I can find that isn't deprecated is copyfile(3). I've implemented this and the results are nearly perfect, however I've since discovered that neither the Finder comments nor the tags associated with original are copied over. Not only do I need them to be copied, but I'm worried about what other metadata isn't being copied that I'm not yet aware of.
Note that I am setting all the appropriate flags on copyfile to copy over the metadata.
How can I achieve my goal without resorting to awful techniques such as an Applescript bridge to read/write the comments using the Finder at the end of the copy?
UPDATE
After much research I have discovered that both the comment and the tags are copied over in the file's extended attributes. However, the comment refuses to display in the Finder.
I saw it mentioned that the comment is also stored in the .DS_Store. As a test I deleted the .DS_Store file and then relaunched the Finder so that it would be regenerated. The comment still doesn't appear.
What needs to be done for the Finder to recognise this metadata?
Note: this answer assumes you are correct about comments etc. not being copied, this has not been verified.
copyfile is available in source form from Apple. You might need to tweak it a bit though to actually compile it. Once you've done that you can modify to add the features you wish.
HTH
There are a lot of similar posts out there, but none that does exactly what I want: I want a simple script, that watches a folder on a Mac for changes and passes the filename of the modified file to command/script when changes are detected.
The tool inotifywait doesn't exist on a mac. Folder events or fswatch or watchdog seem to be getting close, but it turns out they only watch folders or only return the folder name. watchdog might be doing what I need, but I could only find commands like this
watchmedo shell-command --recursive --command='echo ${watch_src_path}' .
which again only passes the folder name in the variable watch_src_path. Does anyone know how to get it (or another program) to pass on the file name of the changed file?
Even if the question is very old, it may be useful to other people looking for the same functionality. I wrote fsw exactly to fill this gap. fsw will give you the name of the changed paths and the type of change event.
Hope this helps.
Edited: fsw was merged with fswatch.
all!
I noticed that Powershell, or more specifically, pasting and tab-completing within Powershell, was a lot slower on my machine after upgrading to v3 from v2. I opened up procmon to see what was going on, only to find out that every attempt to tab-complete or paste anything triggers Powershell to find various permutations of the file provided in the subject. I have some network folders in my $PATH and walking through those folders every time I paste something seems non-ideal.
It seems that this file allows Powershell to behave more like Bash. While this is absolutely FANTASTIC and I'm looking forward to abusing this feature in the very near future, is there any way to configure Powershell such that it only attempts to find this file in one directory?
Thanks!
PSConsoleHostReadLine is actually a function. If PoSH can't find a method, alias, or anything else executable with that name, it falls back to it's default 'cooked' readline with editing, etc.
To redefine it, create a function:
function PSConsoleHostReadline {
[Console]::Readline()
}
As written, this method disables editing, etc. Write your own insane magic to do whatever you wish.
I'm guessing it's searching all the extra locations due to Powershell 3 having "Module Auto Load" which checks for a function in all locations known in the ENV:PSModulePath, and auto-loads the module which contains said method.
This was an oversight in V3. V4 will only search for functions or aliases - it won't search for external exes when looking for PSConsoleHostReadline.
If you're looking for a bash like experience - check out https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine
Let's clarify this once and for all. I tried to Google this but it seems this information can't be found in one place.
When a file is created or removed, the holding directory mtime changes on Windows and Linux both. ctime also changes on Linux bot not on Windows because there ctime is create time.
If a file is reopened and written to, the holding directory does not change. However, both on Windows and Linux the file mtime changes, and on Linux the ctime changes too, on Windows the ctime is create time.
Is this correct? What caveats are there? Are there exceptions over, say Windows network shares? Or Samba?
Edit: those who have voted to close this as off-topic, please leave a comment on which site do you think this is on topic. There are tons of mtime/ctime questions on Stackoverflow and just because I didn't include PHP snippets that rely on this knowledge it doesn't mean there are none :/
Think of it this way:
A directory is a file that holds pointers (or 'links') to files.
As of that:
Changing the content of a file will not affect the directory (unless the file is first deleted and then created again with the same name, as mentioned by Gabor Garami above)
Adding, Deleting or Renaming files will change the content of the directory-file which will cause its ctime/mtime to change as you have described, depending on the OS