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Problem with MDfind query

Open jacoblyw opened this issue 11 years ago • 3 comments

Hello,

I modified your script to move files to the trash (instead of deleting them directly) to make sure it behaved as expected.

I then tagged 3 files with "1 Minute". Imagine my surprise when 13 files appeared in my trash after the first run of os-x-self-destruct.

The problem seems to lie with the query mdfind "tag:$1"

mdfind "tag:1 Minute" catches some files, mdfind "tag:1 Day" others, and so on...

NONE of my files have any of the following tags: 1 Minute, 1 Hour, 1 Day, 1 Week, 1 Month, 1 Year

This may be an undocumented bug or "feature" within Spotlight as the query mdfind "tag:2 Day" also finds a bunch of files with no tags set.

I've changed the query to mdfind "kMDItemUserTags == '$1'" and also the tags to avoid any possibility of confusion ("1 Minute" to "DeleteIn1Minute", etc.)

jacoblyw avatar Sep 30 '14 10:09 jacoblyw

@jacoblyw

Wow, what's weird. I ran multiple tests before I even thought about using this with delete and I never ran into an issue where mdfind returned things that weren't tagged. On the contrary, it was surprisingly consistent/accurate.

For instance, I literally just ran these commands in sequence:

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scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:2 Day"
scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:2 Days"
scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:1 Day"

At this point, I moved a picture to the Desktop and tagged it with "1 Day"-

scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:1 Day"
/Users/scott/Desktop/Benghazi_03.jpg
scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:2 Day"
scott@Scotts-MacBook-Pro~/Sites/vagrant-local$ mdfind "tag:2 Days"

Can you tell me what version of OS X you're running?

tdlm avatar Oct 01 '14 04:10 tdlm

@jacoblyw Also, if you are successfully moving files to the trash, why not put in a PR with your changes?

tdlm avatar Oct 01 '14 04:10 tdlm

Any reason not to close this issue at this point?

tdlm avatar Dec 06 '16 04:12 tdlm