Mac OS X Commands and Wildcard Characters

EDIT: This post have been getting very many views lately so ‘fess up in the comments if you want a part 2 with more advanced and new ways to use Mac OS X commands and wildcard characters.

          This tip/post is going to be about several common Mac OS X commands and wildcard characters I have discovered, at work, that is useful to understand and know how to use. First off, wildcard characters are special characters such as * and ? that help you to find groups of filenames that have something in common.

           For example, say I have a couple of files that I want to find in my home directory. My home directory is cluttered with junk files that I never take the time to organize. But somewhere within that junk pile of files there lay 8 files I would like. Their filenames are ssw_idl.a285, ssw_idl.r391, ssw_idl.z988, ssw_idl.c293, and the other 4 files are named similarly (“ssw_idl.” followed by a letter, then 3 numbers).

Adding a Picture Background to Finder

        The old finder background is awfully boring so make it more lively by adding pictures to the background! It is really easy to do and you can either just set the current folder background to a certain picture or set all folders’ backgrounds to the same picture.

        And here’s a preview:

       So open up a folder and right-click, then “Show View Options”. For you speed daemons, press “Command+J”.

        Now, just click on the button highlighted in the screenshot below: