I have added the missing “quoted form of” in the example above. I recreated your folder structure, and tested it, it worked fine. I am sorry for the trouble, the spaces in filenames was something that slipped by me, when I wrote the example.
It appears that the problem with external drives is again a space. the name of the first one I tried it on “My Passport” when I went to one with out spaces it worked again.
You can see the difference “onlyin” the name of the volume “My Passport” but the failed query shows only “Passport”
Had not see your last post have made that correction and it worked on the example thanks so much. It is amazingly quick.
I have three questions if you would not mind.
The search term appears to be case sensitive can I change that even if it is an option for the user.
I notice that the handler returns all the folders that start with the search term although tit is set to accept the first paragraph. Can I put a repeat loop in the handler so I can select the place I want?
Can I make the search term specific again even as a user option?
I have a long way to go to get my eamils to use this ruotine but cannot thank you enough for your assistance.
Question 1
Nope, I think mdfind by itself is case sensitive, so that is a no no. if your search term consist of 5 letters, then we’d have 120 possible permutations. If you need case insensitivity dearly, then we’d have to generate a list by finder.
I have tried to combine your handler wit your previous suggestions but somehow I am not passing either the “resulttype” or “searchpredicate” correctly. I have forced them both to one of the options within the handler that works. when i use display dialog to see what they are at the handler they both appear to be correct. to make sure no spelling mistakes I copied the items from the handler to the “choose list”. Obviously doing something wrong. I have tried both as strings and text and that did not help.
If I set the searhpredicate within the handler I then get a problem with resulttype. If I set both it works so I think it is the way I am passing the data?
First of all, the choose from list, returns a list, so the searchPredicate, and the resultType parameters won’t get evaluated as text, and therefore fails.
Thanks for making me aware of this, I’ll enforce the handler with your findings. In the mean time, use the handler like this:
set objItem to my findFolderOnly(resultType as text, searchPredicate as text, subject, folderpath)
The line that sets the parent folder, and folder name also needs to be fixed, to something like this:
tell application "System Events" to tell disk item objItem to set {ParentFolder, Foldername} to {POSIX path of container of it, name of it}
I see that you have changed the handler, it would be nice if you didn’t, or gave a notice when you did, as people may think that it is the original one, when it isn’t. (I think of the removal of “set quoted form of”, mainly, I understand the need for the display dialog for debugging purposes, (and so do others).
First my apologies for the change, other than the addition of display dialog(s) I commented out the quoted path as you had already told me to put that in the first script and I figured that any reader would see that as it had not been deleted. Anyway as I said I apologise and will make sure in future if I post the script again there is a reference to any change(s) I made.
Made your first change and it seems to work, have not run an extensive test yet as I wanted to get my apology underway. however your second change is as I thought you had it in the originally handler and is in the last scrip I sent to you,am I missing something.
As I have already made a mistake I would like ask if you are OK with me changing "directorytosearchin to folderpath. If you do not agree I will change the start of the routine so the variables that are being passed are the same names. I understand directory to be more of a UNIX term as opposed to folder in Applescript.
Thank you it is important to me that given the time and effort you have put into helping me that I do not plagiarize your work or fail to acknowledge what you have done.
thanks again I am sure I will be back as I work through my project.
It is not about plagiarizing, it is really about knowing which version is which.
I am far more concerned about something I have written still works how I intended it to do.
Plagiarizing, now that would be if you stripped out the copyright notice, and said you had made it, maybe after changing the variable names, that is something entirely different.
Can’t we just drop this, and go on with something more productive?
Hopefully you will help me with a new issue. As I think you know I am trying ultimately to selected a path based on the result of the search.
One thing I had to change was to allow a display of all the search results if I had called for a resulttype of “All” or Every" I did that by inserting an if then logic test.
if resultType as text = "All" or resultType as text = "Every" then
display dialog "This is the list Returned from the handler " & MyFolderList
set myActiveFolder to choose from list MyFolderList
else
tell application "System Events" to tell disk item objItem to set {ParentFolder, Foldername} to {POSIX path of container of it, name of it}
display dialog "Path to Folder:" & objItem & return & "Parent Folder of Folder " & ParentFolder & return & "Name of Folder: " & Foldername
end if
In my test case two folders met the criteria of an exact match and both were displayed from the “display dialog” command however the choose list only shows the first of the two. I think it may have something to do with delimiters but cannot figure out what.
When the handler are fed the “all” or “every” result type, then it returns a list.
You’d have to iterate over that list with something like this:
repeat with anObj in theResultList
tell application "System Events" to tell disk item (contents of anObj) to set {ParentFolder, Foldername} to {POSIX path of container of it, name of it}
display dialog "Path to Folder:" & objItem & return & "Parent Folder of Folder " & ParentFolder & return & "Name of Folder: " & Foldername
end repeat
# the contents of is included, as it doesn't harm, though I am not sure if it is totally needed either.
# as the "iterator-variable" just contains a reference into the list, and I am not sure how far
# Applescript will go into coercing this.
There are much faster approaches to this, than using this kind of construct, you could for instance use a handler like this to extract the information with.
set pxPath to POSIX path of (path to temporary items from user domain as text)
”> "/Users/mcusr/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/"
set thPath to parentFol for pxPath
” > /Users/mcusr/Library/Caches/"
set folname to pxBasename for pxPath
”> "TemporaryItems"
to parentFol for aPxPath
local tids, parFol
set {tids, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, "/"}
if (character (length of aPxPath) of aPxPath) = "/" then
set parFol to text items 1 thru -3 of aPxPath as text
else
set parFol to text items 1 thru -2 of aPxPath as text
end if
set my text item delimiters to tids
if parFol = "" then set parFol to "/"
return parFol
end parentFol
to pxBaseName for aPxPath
local itm,tids
if (text -1 of aPxPath = "/") then
set itm to -2
else
set itm to -1
end if
set {tids, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, "/"}
set aPxPath to text item itm of aPxPath
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tids
return aPxPath
end pxBaseName
Now, you could extract this info into a list, like I did with System Events, but it is no purpose of that now. (I did it with System Events to not generate to many Apple Events, as those are expensive, and choose to target the disk item, to give its properties in one go.
I have tried the first suggestion and the problem is that the “repeat with anOBJ in MyFolderList” returns the entire list on the first iteration and then fails on (I assume the second) because it cannot get the disk item U/ and the list starts /Users/----. I need to break the list down to each entry which is why I asked about delimiters before. As each folderpath starts with/Users I was hoping to use that as a delimiter, but as I said have not figured how.
I’d rally like to see your loop, and how you do it, before I can make an educated guess as to why your code fails.
On a general basis, please consult the AppleScript Language guide, that is either on the net at developer.apple.com, or as a part of the Developer installation from your CD, if you got them there, I also think you can get it all for free from the Appstore, Xcode, the documentation and everything.
Marc et al: I’ve very impressed with this whose clause. I’ve never seen anything like it, but would like to make use of this pattern.
However, it gets an error when I try this:
tell application "System Events"
set appNameList to every application process whose name is in my getList()
end tell
on getList()
return {"Keyboard Maestro", "Finder", "Script Debugger"}
end getList
(*
=== ERROR ===
System Events got an error: Can't make {"Keyboard Maestro", "Finder", "Script Debugger"} into type specifier.
*)
My understanding is that you just need to insert a timeout.
This script behaved flawlessly :
with timeout of 36000 seconds
tell application "Finder" to ((((path to desktop as text) & "pour ebay:") as alias)'s entire contents)'s folders whose name is in my getlist()
end timeout
on getlist()
return {"_X28706Æ’YK", "_X28737Æ’YK", "_X28782Æ’YK", "_X28990Æ’YK", "_X29050Æ’YK", "_X29066Æ’YK", "_X29075Æ’YK", "_X29101Æ’YK", "_X29109Æ’"}
end getlist
Yvan KOENIG running Sierra 10.12.5 in French (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 5 juin 2017 10:32:25
Those are called filters and they are object specifiers. However, due to poor implementation they’re hard to manage and a lot of applications don’t support them. There is an KVC compatible way of coding to save yourself from writing many object accessor methods, but again there is no guarantee that the application supports it.
From what I can see is that the accessor method doesn’t support the is in operator but it does supports other operators like is. That means that when you use the is in operator the object cannot be resolved and therefore you get the type specifier error.