how to find out, whether an application is installed on th..

In article
,
"kunal" wrote:

> how to find out, whether an application is installed on the MAC or
> not....??
>
> please help...
>
> thanks in advance...
>
> -- kunal

Depends on how exact and how general you want to be.

Most apps create files in specific directories, such as
preferences files in ~/Library/Preferences/, or
/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Application Support,
etc..., so you could just look for any of those files, assuming
someone has run the app at least once.

You could use Spotlight on Tiger to search for the app, which
should be rather fast.

The UNIX locate facility, assuming it is recently updated, can
report on the existents of a file anywhere on the system.

You could look in the most likely places, and then assume that if
you don't find it in those places, it isn't worth finding.

Bob Harris
 >> Stay informed about: how to find out, whether an application is installed on th.. 

Chris Hanson wrote:
> On 2006-08-29 02:33:42 -0700, "kunal" said:
>
>> how to find out, whether an application is installed on the MAC or
>> not....??
>
> The only sure way to know is to exhaustively search all mounted volumes.
>
> What is it that you're really trying to accomplish?
>
> -- Chris
>


There used to be a registry file of applications under MacOS Classic.
Are you saying that there isn't one under MacOS X? I can see how generic
UNIX executables might not be registered, but it seems very lax of Apple
not to create and continuously update a registry of all .app executables
in order to assist the Finder with doing its job.

In fact, I'm almost certain there is one. Perhaps there's no API for
applications programers to use it, but I don't think the Finder could
display as fast as it does at startup without a cache of this kind of
info available somewhere...
 >> Stay informed about: how to find out, whether an application is installed on th.. 

Lawson English wrote:
> Chris Hanson wrote:
>> On 2006-08-29 02:33:42 -0700, "kunal" said:
>>
>>> how to find out, whether an application is installed on the MAC or
>>> not....??
>>
>> The only sure way to know is to exhaustively search all mounted volumes.
>>
>> What is it that you're really trying to accomplish?
>>
>> -- Chris
>>
>
>
> There used to be a registry file of applications under MacOS Classic.
> Are you saying that there isn't one under MacOS X? I can see how generic
> UNIX executables might not be registered, but it seems very lax of Apple
> not to create and continuously update a registry of all .app executables
> in order to assist the Finder with doing its job.
>
> In fact, I'm almost certain there is one. Perhaps there's no API for
> applications programers to use it, but I don't think the Finder could
> display as fast as it does at startup without a cache of this kind of
> info available somewhere...
>

I knew there had to be something. Check out Launch Services. There
should be a way of grabbing the info it maintains:



http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/LaunchServi...Concept

Registering Applications

All applications available on the user’s system must be registered to
make them known to Launch Services and copy their document binding and
other information into its database. It isn’t ordinarily necessary to
perform this task explicitly, since a variety of utilities and services
built into the Mac OS X system software take care of it automatically:

A built-in background tool, run whenever the system is booted or a new
user logs in, automatically searches the Applications folders in the
system, network, local, and user domains and registers any new
applications it finds there. (This operation is analogous to “rebuilding
the desktop” in earlier versions of Mac OS.)
The Finder automatically registers all applications as it becomes aware
of them, such as when they are dragged onto the user’s disk or when the
user navigates to a folder containing them.
When the user attempts to open a document for which no preferred
application can be found in the Launch Services database, the Finder
presents a dialog asking the user to select an application with which to
open the document. It then registers that application before launching it.
In spite of these automatic registration utilities, it may sometimes be
necessary to register an application explicitly with Launch Services.
For example, although developers are encouraged to package their
applications so that they can be installed by simply dragging them onto
the user’s disk, some applications may require more elaborate custom
installer software. In such cases, the installer should call the Launch
Services function LSRegisterFSRef (or LSRegisterURL) to register the
application explicitly.
 >> Stay informed about: how to find out, whether an application is installed on th..