MacOS – How to get the shortest file size on aliases

aliasmacos

I realize a bit of why they are so big. Actually, they used to be small enough (around 2kb) and still magical about keeping the file link.

I can also see a few ways to "shorten" it, including one I've been using for a long time already, which is a simple service to create symlinks instead. There's an issue there:

Symlinks are not aliases

They break way too easily. An alias can keep linked to the origin most of the times.
Some software will treat symlinks differently from Aliases. Here, each one have their use, and eventually I'll use one or another.
Not as easy to create as aliases -> use CMD + ALT while dragging n' dropping files!

So, forget symlinks for this question, please!

As for the actual way to shorten it (described on the already linked apple forums) they are way unpractical. First you need to install Shrink Alias with Shortcuts (because the first is unsupported in newer OS X's and the second is a hack to make it available as a Service) and Delete Data Fork workflow. Then manually apply both to each alias. Eventhough you can do it by selecting all files in Finder, again, you still have to do it for each time you create aliases and it's many hacks to keep updated on the next OS'es.

Isn't there a simple Service Workflow, Automator or AppleScript which could do all that automatically whenever I create a new alias, maybe by hooking up on the Alias Manager?

I doubt there is a secret to help with any of this…

How about some other new idea about all this?

Best Answer

In High Sierra, the following works: just select the alias and run Finder command "Show Original" (command-R). This trims the alias size down to a minimum. This brought an alias that was previously 24 Mb down to 8 Kb.

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to fix failed aliases

Here's my stab at solving this problem with Applescript. The following applescript will take selected aliases in the Finder and try and relink them to the new path replacing Backup with External in the POSIX path.

Hopefully it's straightforward. You could probably make it recursive to search for aliases in selected folders, but that's more work than I care to do -- and then there's the problem of dealing with aliases to folders. Things could get messy. ;-)

Hope it helps.

tell application "Finder"
    set these_items to the selection
end tell

repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
    set this_item to (item i of these_items) as alias
    set this_info to info for this_item

    if class of this_item is alias then
        tell application "Finder"
            set original_file to original item of this_item
            set this_alias_file_name to displayed name of this_item
            set container_folder to container of this_item

            set the_path to the POSIX path of (original_file as alias)
            set new_path to my replaceText("/Backup/", "/External/", the_path)

            move this_item to trash
            try
                make new alias file at container_folder to (POSIX file new_path) with properties {name:this_alias_file_name}
            on error errMsg number errorNumber
                if errorNumber is -10000 then -- new original file not found, try relinking to old
                    try
                        make new alias file at container_folder to (POSIX file the_path) with properties {name:this_alias_file_name}
                    on error errMsg number errorNumber
                        if errorNumber is -10000 then -- old original not found. link's dead Jim
                            display dialog "The original file for alias " & this_alias_file_name & " was not found."
                        else
                            display dialog "An unknown error occurred:  " & errorNumber as text
                        end if
                    end try
                else
                    display dialog "An unknown error occurred:  " & errorNumber as text
                end if
            end try
        end tell
    end if
end repeat

on replaceText(find, replace, subject)
    set prevTIDs to text item delimiters of AppleScript
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to find
    set subject to text items of subject

    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to replace
    set subject to "" & subject
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to prevTIDs

    return subject
end replaceText

MacOS – How to move a folder containing aliases to another machine without breaking the aliases

Aliases are not the same as symlinks.

Symlinks just point to a path (relative or absolute). Aliases first track the file's unique ID and then the path.

Since there are two pieces of information stored in an alias - they are more robust and will follow a file that's moved based on the unique ID. The downside is that the unique ID is based on the file system so copying the file elsewhere mints a new ID so the alias doesn’t map to the new location by design and implementation (currently at least).

Finder (or the very powerful ditto) are your best bets for moving aliases intact. Worst case you could use disk utility to make an image of a folder that contains everything needed as a subfolder and then move that to preserve the relative locations of the files and isolate the effects of a short name change (/Users/whatever) in case you wish to change that. Once the original mac is disconnected from the new mac - the aliases will reconnect as desired to location of the files on the new mac.

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