MacOS – Does Spotlight index dotfiles (OS X Yosemite)

macosspotlight

I want to create an Alfred workflow with some dotfiles (i.e. zsh config files).

Long story short, in Alfred, I only can play with files indexed by Spotlight.
Apparently, Spotlight doesn't index dotfiles as I can't get any dotfile in my Alfred results.

Any of my Spotlight setting that would force Spotlight to index dotfiles index is checked.

So, my question is there a way to force Spotlight to index dotfiles, dotfiles of a specific directory, a specific dotfile?

Best Answer

Using the mdfind command which queries the Spotlight Database I have to say no because the tests I performed would indicate so. In a Terminal using mdfind -name .bash_history as well as subsequent commands changing the .filename portion of the command, mdfind did not return the specific file names while only returning filenames that contained the .filename portion within where applicable.

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What happens if you try in terminal.app (change /Search/Directory/ to yours):

mdfind -onlyin /Search/Directory/ kMDItemFSName == "\"NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl\""

Or in applescript editor.

    set searchPath to "/Search/Directory/"

    set this_item to "/Users/USERNAME/Desktop/NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl"

    set theFileName to "\\\"" & (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) & "\\\"" as string

--set theFileName to quoted form of (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) as string

  set theOrigFilePath to paragraphs of (do shell script "mdfind -onlyin " & searchPath & " kMDItemFSName == \"" & theFileName & "\"")

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You add a shell script as the first automator task to run sudo mdutil -E /. This will rebuild the index.

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