mjhjmtu

I just figured out that I'm dealing with symlinks rather than aliases per se. (For some reason, they show up as aliases in finder.)

I have a ton of unexplained SYMLINKS on my HDD.
And unfortunately the SYMLINKS don't work -- i.e., clicking on it doesn't get me to the file.

So now I would like to find all SYMLINKS on my HDD.
Then for each one, search for the file that it once linked to, presumably on the same HDD.
Then copy that file to the same subdirectory as the SYMLINK.

So I have, roughly speaking,

FIND all files (in Directory) type=SYMLINK. FOR each one, DO ..
 FIND referentFile (somewhere on the HDD)
 cp referentFile to (Subdirectory that contains the alias).
DONE.

Many Thanks.
PS -- I'm really considering going back to strictly Linux over this. The simpler the setup, the less likely a data disaster - lol.

The first part of this question has an answer on AskDifferent:

• How to find all the aliases within a given file system?

Here is the command to find aliases:

mdfind kMDItemKind="Alias"

In general you can use the mdfind (MetaData Find) command to (very) quickly search for files. From the man-pages:

The mdfind command consults the central metadata store and returns a list of files that match the given metadata query. The query can be a string or a query expression.

So I wouldn't give up on OSX just yet. In fact, mdfind is one of the things I miss most about OSX when I'm on Linux.

Unfortunately the second part of this question was surprisingly more difficult to resolve. I found a few relevant StackExchange posts:

• How to query target of all Finder aliases?




• OS X terminal command to resolve path of an alias




• How do I fix failed aliases?




• Reading Alias files

These led me to several potential solutions.

My favorite came from the blog post Make Terminal Follow Aliases Like Symlinks. It referenced a small open-source C program called getTrueName.c. Here is the source code:

// getTrueName.c
// 
// DESCRIPTION
// Resolve HFS and HFS+ aliased files (and soft links), and return the
// name of the "Original" or actual file. Directories have a "/"
// appended. The error number returned is 255 on error, 0 if the file
// was an alias, or 1 if the argument given was not an alias
// 
// BUILD INSTRUCTIONS
// gcc-3.3 -o getTrueName -framework Carbon getTrueName.c 
//
// Note: gcc version 4 reports the following warning
// warning: pointer targets in passing argument 1 of 'FSPathMakeRef'
// differ in signedness
//
// COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
// Copyright 2005 by Thos Davis. All rights reserved.
// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
// modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
// published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
// License, or (at your option) any later version.
//
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
// WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
// General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
// License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
// Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
// MA 02111-1307 USA


#include <Carbon/Carbon.h> 
#define MAX_PATH_SIZE 1024
#define CHECK(rc,check_value) if ((check_value) != noErr) exit((rc))

int main ( int argc, char * argv ) 
 
 FSRef fsRef; 
 Boolean targetIsFolder; 
 Boolean wasAliased; 
 UInt8 targetPath[MAX_PATH_SIZE+1]; 
 char * marker;

 // if there are no arguments, go away
 if (argc < 2 ) exit(255); 

 CHECK( 255,
 FSPathMakeRef( argv[1], &fsRef, NULL ));

 CHECK( 1,
 FSResolveAliasFile( &fsRef, TRUE, &targetIsFolder, &wasAliased));

 CHECK( 255,
 FSRefMakePath( &fsRef, targetPath, MAX_PATH_SIZE)); 

 marker = targetIsFolder ? "/" : "" ;
 printf( "%s%sn", targetPath, marker ); 

 exit( 1 - wasAliased );
 

I downloaded this source code and compiled using the following command:

gcc -o getTrueName -framework Carbon getTrueName.c

Of course I wanted to test it out. In order to avoid leaving the terminal I created an alias using the following commands:

user@host:~$ FULL_PATH_TO_TARGET_FILE=/tmp/alias-target

user@host:~$ echo "testing" > "$FULL_PATH_TO_TARGET_FILE"

user@host:~$ osascript 
-e 'tell application "Finder"' 
-e "make new alias to file (posix file "$FULL_PATH_TO_TARGET_FILE") at desktop" 
-e 'end tell'

alias file alias-target of folder Desktop of folder user of folder Users of disk MacHD

Then I verified the Alias using the getTrueName program:

user@host:~$ ./getTrueName ~/Desktop/alias-target

/tmp/alias-target

Victory!

The blog post Stupid Mac OS X Tricks: Resolving Aliases also looks like it might have a solution. It contained the following Perl script:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use Mac::Errors;
use Mac::Files;
use Mac::Resources;

my $path = '/Users/pudge/Desktop/some alias';
my $res = FSpOpenResFile($path, 0) or die $Mac::Errors::MacError;
# get resource by index; get first "alis" resource
my $alis = GetIndResource('alis', 1) or die $Mac::Errors::MacError;
my $link = ResolveAlias($alis);
print $link;

I didn't have the required libraries and I didn't feel like installing a bunch of stuff, so I gave up on this one.

I also found the mac_alias, which seemed promising. I spent 5 or 10 minutes messing around with it, but wasn't able to figure out how to resolve an alias target.

I might have figured out how to locate referent files for symlinks that are broken.

[Btw, I'm the OP -- couldn't find original loginfo, so I signed up anew.]

Use a duplicate file finder like dupeGuru. Set it to
o Search entire directory/drives containing symlinks and referents.
o Mix files of different types.
o Inexact matches are okay (i.e., certainty-level around 80%).
o Match filename only (not content or entire directory).

This will turn up many false positives, but it will include symlinks and their referents (broken or intact).