Vitag

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Batch tag from the command line

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Vitag is a script for Mac OS X (10.9+) that reads files and folder paths and their current tags into a text document, opens it in an editor, and applies any tag changes when the file is saved and closed.

Installation

Download the script from GitHub. Copy vitag into a folder in your path and make it executable (chmod ug+x vitag).

I may make this available as a gem eventually, but it currently has no non-standard dependencies and is pretty damn simple. Trying to keep it that way…

Usage

vitag [options] [path]

A list of files, with their current tags in square brackets following the path, will open in your editor.

1. Modify the content between the square brackets using a comma-separated list
2. Save and close the file

That’s it. A little text editor magic with search and replace can make batch file/folder tagging with conditional filters a breeze.

Additional Usage Notes:

• leading/trailing whitespace is ignored, so [one,two,three] is the same as [one, two, three].
• Space between words is preserved, no quotes needed for multi-word tags. The tag ends at the next comma or end of the bracket pair.
• Changes are be mirrored in their entirety. If you remove a tag, it will be removed from the file, change the tag, the file’s tag changes, and so on.
• Tags that are recognized Finder Label colors will additionally have their attribute data for display color changed to that color, clearing existing colors. Deleting a color tag from the list will clear the color in Finder. This currently only works with the default color names, not customized labels.

Options

-d, --depth DEPTH          Level of nested directories to include (default 0, current only)
-f, --filter GLOB_PATTERN  Only modify files matching GLOB_PATTERN (case insensitive)
-I                         When used with -f, make case sensitive
-e, --editor EDITOR        Force editor to use (default $EDITOR)
-v, --verbose LEVEL        Level of debug messages to output
-h, --help

By default it will use, in order of preference, $EDITOR, vim, or vi, determined by the first available executable found. Specify an editor directly with -e/--editor.

If no path argument is given, it uses the current working directory.

With no depth flag, it will search the current directory for both files and folders. Adding -d X/--depth X (where X is an integer) will search nested directories with 1 being the root of folders within the current path. There’s currently no error checking on maximum file count, so err on the conservative side.

-f/--filter can be any shell glob pattern, e.g. “*.pdf”. It defaults to case-insensitivity, but you can use the -I switch to force it.

Examples

Tagging folders in my base project directory

$ vitag -f "nv*"

Opens vim with a temp file containing:

nv []
nvremind []
nvremindapp []

If I edit that to be:

nv [@nvalt,cocoa]
nvremind [@nvremind,nvalt,ruby]
nvremindapp [@nvremindapp,cocoa]

When I save and close, my tags will be:

$ tag -l nv*
nv                              @nvalt,cocoa
nvremind                        @nvremind,nvalt,ruby
nvremindapp                     @nvremindapp,cocoa

By the way, if you’re tagging on the command line, don’t do it without tag (available through homebrew, brew install tag). This script would be a lot faster if I used tag or an Obj-C implementation directly instead of looping through mdls and xargs calls, but I didn’t want to add dependencies off the bat. I may add the option if it starts frustrating me.

Download

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• GitHub
• Download