$ spot
Spotlight CLI.
If a command takes a [path], the results will be restricted to that directory.
apps Installed applications.
attr Attributes that can be used with "spot <query>".
author <query> [path] Files from author.
ext <query> [path] Any files with that extension.
$ spot ext pdf ~
file <query> [path] Find files.
$ spot file vimrc ~/dotfiles
group <group|gid> [path] All files from user.
$ spot group $GID /etc
size <rel> <size> [path] Find all files of a certain size in bytes.
Or (k)ilobytes, (m)egabytes, (g)igabytes.
$ spot size '>=' 1g ~
text <query> [path] Find files containing text.
$ spot text 'ascii porn' ~
user <user|uid> [path] All files from user.
$ spot user $UID /var
<path> Get all attributes for that path.
$ spot ~/fancy.gif
<query> [path] Generic query. Supports any attributes from "spot attr".
See link at the bottom for the syntax.
$ spot foo
$ spot 'kMDItemMusicalGenre == *Metal*' /data/music
The Spotlight query syntax explained:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/SpotlightQuery/Concepts/QueryFormat.html
It's also fiendishly easy to add new commands to spot. For adding a command "music", simply add an executable shell script called "spot-music" to your $PATH:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# The following line is optional and outputs a small reminder,
# if not enough arguments were given to the "music" command.
required $# '<genre>'
mdfind "kMDItemMusicalGenre == $1"Using this, you can simply list all songs of a certain genre:
$ spot music Metal
$ spot music "Alpine folk music"
You could also change spot-music to take a second optional argument, to restrict the matches to a certain directory:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
required $# '<genre>'
genre=$1
dir=$2
mdfind "kMDItemMusicalGenre == $genre" ${dir:+ -onlyin "$dir"}Now, you can also use it like this:
$ spot music Metal ~/music