Troubling MacOS 9.1 / AS / SHERLOCK 2 dilemma: *CAN* I go forward or must I go back?
Troubling MacOS 9.1 / AS / SHERLOCK 2 dilemma: *CAN* I go forward or must I go back?
- Subject: Troubling MacOS 9.1 / AS / SHERLOCK 2 dilemma: *CAN* I go forward or must I go back?
- From: Bill Christens-Barry <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 14:40:30 -0400
I'm hoping for some feedback on a troubling dilemma I've found.
I need to transfer files from a Mac (running Mac OS 9.1 and AS 1.6)
to a Windows-formatted drive that is a mounted volume on the Mac. The
files are to be copied into a single, unstructured directory
containing around 100,000 files. The files I want to copy to the
server drive can have names that duplicate those of existing files
there, so I need to check against this and alter the names of files
whose names would collide before doing the transfer. I'm constrained
in the form of the names and can't just allow a " Copy" string to
appended to the name.
The easiest way I know to do this is to search the mounted volume for
names that would collide. I find that I can't use Sherlock 2 because
for this because it interprets my every effort (in a AS script, that
is) to find files by name as a search by content type of search. One
can do such a search (find files by name) using Sherlock by hand or
from a saved search files.
This seems to be a documented bug in Sherlock 2's AS operability,
although I've only seen the Apple tech note quoted by others. It's a
prohibitive bug in my case, because the volume is Windows-formatted
and can't be indexed, and Sherlock 2 insists on using an indexed
volume for search by content. So, I can't even think about making a
text file containing a list of all of the files on the Windows
machine and searching the content of that file. No index, no search.
My next approach has been to try to catch a file name duplication
error, and avoid searching altogether. This works pretty well,
although 9.1 on my Pismo seems to gag on the "renameFile",
"copyFile", and "deleteFile" commands from Jon's Commands that is
essential to my whole strategy (although I've seen these work on
other 9.1 machines).
All of the above efforts work perfectly on my old clone running Mac
OS 8.6 and AS 1.4.3).
I'm more or less fuming at all of this, and wondering: do things get
any better in MacOS 9.2.1? This is must do work that I have to
conquer in a hurry. Should I be thinking about going back to an
earlier MacOS, maybe 9.0.2? Should I try an earlier version of AS?
Does MacOS 9.2.1 fix Sherlock 2's AS implementation, to wit, have
they overcome its use of indexing or fixation on search by content?
Other suggestions?
Thanks.
Bill Christens-Barry
-----------------------
Bill Christens-Barry, PhD
Equipoise Imaging, LLC
email@hidden