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Possible to search for extended attributes?

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 9:23 am
by JayB
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.

Re: Possible to search for extended attributes?

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2018 11:19 am
by mike
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.