How can you create and resolve Finder Aliases at the command line? And two further utilities you may find helpful for working with Aliases.
alisma
They’re Base-64 encoded data which is related to the Finder Alias. Here’s how to resolve them in an app, at the command line, and in code.
Use Finder aliases at the command line, compare extended attributes of two files, and normalise Unicode strings.
This page is for your support questions and comments on my free utilities Precize, Alifix and alisma, which […]
So resolving an Alias doesn’t always update data in the Alias file, even though it returns the correct path when possible. This is becoming a mess.
Links – hard links, symlinks, and Finder Aliases – are the most complex and confusing of simple concepts in computing. Do they get any better after research?
It’s all too easy to change the information in a Finder Alias when you’re inspecting it. Here’s how to avoid that, and a new version of Precize to help.
Diagram summarising how Finder Aliases work, including their resolution. And how to confuse QuickLook thumbnails.
Finder Aliases can update their path information when they are resolved. Also some differences between Aliases and Bookmarks.
Details of some of the information stored inside Bookmarks and Finder aliases, and a new version of Precize to show you that info.
The Eclectic Light Company 