Re: metadata completion functions for OS X 10.4

[William Scott <wgscott@chemistry.ucsc.edu>]

Hi folks:

I am trying to write some completion functions for the new metadata
utilities distributed with Mac OS X v. 10.4.x. that make fast searches
possible.

Currently I have a simple one for the mdls command that seems to behave:

http://xanana.ucsc.edu/Library/init/zsh/local-functions/darwin/_mdls

The one I am trying to write for _mdfind isn't very good currently, and
could benefit from someone who really knows what they are doing having a
look at it:

http://xanana.ucsc.edu/Library/init/zsh/local-functions/darwin/_mdfind

Hopefully the comments at the top give the basic idea.  It suffers from
several problems that I am sure are straightforward for people who
understand this stuff better than I do.

1.  In my _mdls function, I have some zstyles at the top that work
straight away.  But in the _mdfind function, they don't kick in until the
second time it is invoked.

2.  There are two types of commands one can issue with mdfind that don't
have -x type arguments, eg:

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == '<any string>'"
mdfind <any string>

I'm not sure how to differentiate between the two types of commands.
What I have sort of works, but it seems quite clunky and amaturish.

3. For completions of the command of the form
mdfind "kMDItemContentType == '<any string>'"
I am using compadd  -P \" -p kMDItem -S " == '"  to add in the
first set of double-quotes, then the constant prefix kMDItem and then a
suffix == '   but I am not sure how to prompt for the string and then
automatically close first the single quote and then the double quote.
Also occasionally I seem to wind up with
mdfind """kMDItemContentType == '"

If anyone has suggestions or could point me toward relevant examples I
would be grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Bill Scott