macos - How to use Mac Finder to list all aliases in a folder

Question

I downloaded a repository from Bitbucket.org as a zip file and unzipped it using iZip to my Mac. Xcode found many compile errors because the zip or unzip did not preserve aliases properly. So I used hg to clone the repo, the aliases were preserved, and the Xcode compile was then clean. I would like to find all the aliases in my folder and replace them by their targets so future zips will work. I've done a lot of searching and can't find anything that says how find them either with the Mac Finder utility or the bash find command. I've tried using Finder->All My Files with search->kind->other->alias and it finds about 100 aliases but not the ones in my local repo that I know are there. Do I need to rebuild/update the OSX 10.9.1 index list of all my files somehow? Does the find command have a flag for OSX alias file types? Can I navigate Finder to a folder and then search recursively for a file type (the search criteria option seems to disappear if All My Files is not selected). Another alternative would be to print to file the contents of a full Finder list with the "Kind" column showing and then sort by that.

mdfind "kMDItemKind == 'Alias'" -onlyin /path/of/repo

Seems like mdfind might work. But it only finds the same files that Finder->All My Files with search->kind->other->alias finds. Those files and the ones in my repo are listed as Kind "Alias" by Finder. I've read that there are 3 kinds of links: Alias, Symbolic Links, and Hard Links. The listing by the ls command for a file found by the mdfind command is:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 kenm staff 45100 Dec 25 2012 GTLDrive.h

The listing by the ls command for a file I would like to find is:

lrwxr-xr-x 1 kenm staff 24 Jan 14 21:38 Headers -> ./Versions/A/Headers

Finder calls them both "Alias" but ls thinks they are different. Is there an mdfind command line that finds the second type of Alias?

Answer 1

In Terminal:

This should find all aliases (Apple aliases)

mdfind "kMDItemKind == 'Alias'" -onlyin /path/of/your/repo

For finding all symlinks (symbolic links) you can use:

ls -lR /path/of/your/repo | grep ^l

To only show symlinks in current directory:

ls -la | grep ^l

If you want to view the full path of symlinks:

find /path/of/your/repo -type l