Inspect the deepest details of your files with Precize 1.0b6

This new version of Precize provides a wealth of detailed information about files, bundles, and other folders in macOS, from El Capitan to High Sierra, and on HFS+ and APFS. It also integrates features which were previously in my free tool Preciziun.

This information includes three different ways of reaching the item through a path: its regular path, the persistent volfs path based on its inode (which can be used at the command line), and the File Reference URL.

It then gives full estimates of the size of the file, according to that of its data fork and metadata.

Following those is a collection of Posix information, including the permissions in octal, the name and ID of its owner and group, dates of creation and last modification, the macOS file type, and its file system reference count.

The item’s Bookmark is given in Base-64, and the path to which that resolves. Finally, it provides a dump of extended attributes for the item.

The new Bookmark Resolver window (functionality previously provided separately in Preciziun) lets you paste in a Base-64 Bookmark, which it will then attempt to resolve. If successful, you can preview that item using QuickLook, and inspect it in the Finder.

This new version also fixes a crashing bug in Preciziun, and saves a complete report about any opened item in text format, which includes the Base-64 Bookmark.

I am aware that the minimum window size is a little too deep for some smaller displays, and the next version will reduce that to make it fit displays better.

Precize version 1.0b6 is available from here: precize10b6
and in Downloads above.

I particularly welcome comments from those able to test this on El Capitan, please, which I am unable to do here.

4Comments

Add yours

1

Sleepy Dan on May 16, 2018 at 4:38 pm

Why would we need to use this? I don’t understand its practical value.

LikeLike
- 2
  
  hoakley on May 16, 2018 at 4:51 pm
  
  A few examples:
  – the volfs path is a bit like a Bookmark or Finder Alias in that it works no matter where you move a file to, on any given volume. It can be used instead of a normal path at the command line;
  – some files have quite large extended attributes, such as thumbnail images. When storing them, e.g. 100 images with thumbnails on a USB stick, they take more space than the Finder says. This is the only way to check their true total size;
  – permissions are handy, as the Finder doesn’t tell you the IDs, only the owner and group names;
  – a Bookmark is like a Finder Alias or volfs path, and is used by Launch Services, for example, for the Recent Files feature in all apps. There’s no other tool for resolving a Bookmark, which you might find in a Launch Services file or elsewhere.
  I hope that helps,
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
3

JMC on May 17, 2018 at 1:13 am

Hi Howard.
Precize works on El Capitan. On my 13″ MPB I can only see the upper part of the extended attributes field but I know you’ll be fixing that. Other than that its a very handy little tool. When I tested it on a modified photo I dragged the photo from Photos to a ‘shelf’ app (Yoink) from which I dragged it onto the Precize icon. Lo and behold the path pointed to the container where Yoink stores pending items. The bookmark resolved correctly, Preview worked and Reveal in Finder took me to the item. That was a nice little find. I had no idea what Yoink did with files while they were ‘on the shelf’.
Many thanks once again!
JMC

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 4
  
  hoakley on May 17, 2018 at 5:01 am
  
  Thank you so much for that – I’m delighted it’s proving useful too.
  I am aiming for a final release, with the window shortened, in the next few days.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike

Share this:

Like this:

Related