Possible to search for extended attributes?

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JayB
Posts: 192
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 4:38 pm

Possible to search for extended attributes?

Post by JayB » Wed Nov 14, 2018 9:23 am

Is there a way to use Nimble Commander's Find dialog to search for extended attributes?

For example, you have tagged files with "com.apple.metadata:Tag1" and "com.apple.metadata:Tag2" etc., and you want to quickly find the files with tags as xattr, or want to find all quarantined files in your home folder by searching for "com.apple.quarantine" etc.

I don't see this functionality. If I haven't missed anything, are there plans for it? (Short- or long-term)

The best place would probably be an expanded "Find with Spotlight" menu, and the command-line equivalents would be something like:

Code: Select all

mdfind -onlyin "$(pwd)" "com.apple.metadata:Tag1 == * "
mdfind -onlyin "$(pwd)" "com.apple.metadata:Tag1 == '<SearchString in xattr>' "
mdfind -onlyin "$(pwd)" "com.apple.quarantine"
So while you can perform basic searches with Spotlight in NC, you can't (so it seems) search for the standout spotlight feature, namely extended attribute search.

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mike
Posts: 1060
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 5:35 am
Location: Exeter, UK

Re: Possible to search for extended attributes?

Post by mike » Tue Nov 20, 2018 11:19 am

It's not supported now.
Generally speaking, that's not a question of this particular search option, but broadly about making the search facility more modular and adding some kind of boolean algebra to flexibly combine various requests. That's kinda what Spotlight has under the hood, but limited to an index database.
I definitely do want such feature, but that's a rather serious commitment, so (as usual) can't say anything specific.

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