Re: Finding .m files on Mac with Tiger

[Joe Koski]

on 7/15/05 12:25 PM, Henry F. Mollet at address@hidden wrote:

> In my Fink installation of Octave 2.1.46 on iMac with OS X 10.8, it was
> installed in /sw which is visible in the Finder Window and Finder/Find will
> find any .m file.
> 
> In my recent installation of Octave 2.1.71 from source using David Collet's
> summary page (thanks), the installation of Octave is done in the usual Unix
> /usr directory. It does not appear in the Finder Window unless one uses the
> Finder/Go/Go to Folder with the path /usr. Finder/Find cannot located any .m
> files. I should know what .m files I have available.
> 
> I've just spent 1 hour with Apple Support and they have put in a feature
> request. Mind-boggling that the new Finder (Spotlight) should be a step
> backwards as it cannot find anything in /usr.
> 
> Can anybody with Octave on Mac OS X 10.4.1 please confirm that they are
> having the same problem or if there's a solution.
> Henry

Henry,

For poking around in /usr/local on my Mac, the key UNIX tool that I use is
"find" as a replacement for the Finder.

First, cd /usr (or cd /usr/local) in terminal; then, as an example,

   find . -name "*octave*" -print

and you'll get a list of all files and directories in /usr (the . means
start in the current directory) that contain the string "octave" in their
name. 

With a few other UNIX commands (cd, ls, mv, cp and sudo), you can do just
about anything necessary. If something needs editing, I cp it from its
/usr/local/... directory to some non-write-protected directory (e.g. cp
bitcmp.m ~/, which places a copy of bitcmp.m in your home directory), do the
edits, test it, and then copy it back to the proper write-protected
directory with sudo cp. Once a file copy is in your home directory, you can
treat it like any other text file, and drag it anywhere you please.

Keep in mind that Fink's /sw directory also had write protection unless you
removed it. Yes, it's a pain compared to the normal Mac way of doing things.

Joe

 




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