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RumorConsumer

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2016
1,664
1,189
Hello!

I am wondering if somebody could whip me up an app or script that scans a directory recursively and prints the output to a file.

I want to know size, created date, modified date, if its a folder how many items there are, and then info for each file. my goal is to make a text file with a full directory accounting. Everything Finder would be able to tell you. Anybody know this one off the top or know an app that can do?
 
Alas, I do not have a full AppleScript at hand that would exactly do what you want. Maybe there is something outside; I usually google "Applescript" followed by the solution I am looking for. This helps me at least to get some ideas.

If you want to script yourself, here a beginning:

AppleScript:
tell application "Finder"
    set x to target of window 1 as alias
   
    set the_files to list folder (x)
   
end tell

These few lines only return a list of the files in the folder that is currently open in the Finder. But of course, many more informations can be extracted. When I want to generate a text file from Applescript, I mostly use TextEdit as it is simple and scriptable but Pages would work also.
 
Getting information is the easy part, putting it into a usable form can be a pain. There are extended attributes, spotlight, exif, bundle info, etc, but the item list should probably be narrowed so that you don’t wind up with a wall of text for each item.

Check out the ls man page - something like the following should get you started:

Code:
ls -lhART /path/to/source_dir >> /path/to/text_file
 
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