ScriptLight

Why doesn't this have any meaningful reviews? This tool is INVALUABLE for searching AppleScript code, if nothing else, since .scpt files, the usual form of AppleScripts, aren't searchable as text, and therefore aren't reachable by SpotLight. I use AppleScript extensively for everything from short scripts to bind keystrokes to to significant programs. I'm always looking for something I did too long ago to remember much about or how to do something I know I've done but at the moment just can't remember how. ScriptLight does much more than SpotLight because it not only locates scripts, but provides a source code browser, with filters and other features, to display them. So even though SpotLight can index text in my Python programs, JavaScript files, shell scripts, etc., ScriptLight is much easier to work with. This is especially true when ScriptLight locates the text in multiple files with the same name which might not have the same content -- it's much easier to browse these in ScriptLight than open up a Finder window with the SpotLight results then open each file in an editor and search for the text. True, sometimes for non-AppleScript files if I have some idea where the file is a simple recursive grep (or something that does grep through a more convenient interface as many code editors have) is sufficient. And, because I develop code in a wide variety of languages and have a very large set of files I want ScriptLight to index, it does take a long time for ScriptLight to refresh its index. However, once the files have been indexed ScriptLight finds things very quickly through a convenient interface.

Why doesn't this have any meaningful reviews? This tool is INVALUABLE for searching AppleScript code, if nothing else, since .scpt files, the usual form of AppleScripts, aren't searchable as text, and therefore aren't reachable by SpotLight. I use AppleScript extensively for everything from short scripts to bind keystrokes to to significant programs. I'm always looking for something I did too long ago to remember much about or how to do something I know I've done but at the moment just can't remember how. ScriptLight does much more than SpotLight because it not only locates scripts, but provides a source code browser, with filters and other features, to display them. So even though SpotLight can index text in my Python programs, JavaScript files, shell scripts, etc., ScriptLight is much easier to work with. This is especially true when ScriptLight locates the text in multiple files with the same name which might not have the same content -- it's much easier to browse these in ScriptLight than open up a Finder window with the SpotLight results then open each file in an editor and search for the text. True, sometimes for non-AppleScript files if I have some idea where the file is a simple recursive grep (or something that does grep through a more convenient interface as many code editors have) is sufficient. And, because I develop code in a wide variety of languages and have a very large set of files I want ScriptLight to index, it does take a long time for ScriptLight to refresh its index. However, once the files have been indexed ScriptLight finds things very quickly through a convenient interface.

Worst. Screen. Shot. Ever.