Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / August 2006

While on this topic, one of the first things I do to any newly
installed Mac that I will use is to move the locate database update
from weekly to daily and remove the "run as nobody" so it runs as
root (otherwise it does not see any of my own files!).

Add /etc/daily.local:

#!/bin/sh -
#
#       @(#)daily       8.2 (Berkeley) 1/25/94
#
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin

if [ -x /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb ]; then
    echo ""
    echo "Rebuilding locate database:"
    locdb=/var/db/locate.database
    touch "${locdb}"; chown nobody "${locdb}"; chmod 644 "${locdb}"
    # echo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb | nice -5 su -fm nobody 2>&1

    /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
    chmod 444 "${locdb}"
fi

Delete the locate.updatedb code from /etc/weekly (unfortunately, you
have to do this to avoid it clobbering the good database with the bad
database for up to one day a week).

After this, locate works like Spotlight should, ie finds everything,
finds it very fast.

Eg, "locate s3 | grep pdf" - find the Amazon S3 documentation (|
xargs bbedit for good measure ;-)

Enjoy,
   Peter.

Sorry John, haven't read the list in a week.

Here's an example:

  use Mac::Glue ':all';  # get location()

  my $eudora = new Mac::Glue 'Eudora';
  my $box = $eudora->obj(mailbox => 'Out');
  my $mail = $eudora->make(
     new => 'message',
     at => location(end => $box)
  );

You can probably see how this compares:

  ['euMB'][":Out"] is like $eudora->obj(mailbox => 'Out')
  insertionloc('end ', ['euMB'][":Out"]) is like location(end => $box)
  core.create('CSOm', 'euMS', ...) is like $eudora->make(new => 'message')

etc.

The full example of creating, composing, and sending mail is in the
distribution, in ex/eudora_send_mail, along with a bunch of other examples.

Feel free to ask any such questions, though you might want to Cc: me when
you mail the list, since I only glance at the list about once a week or so.