Finder: Symlink This Window to That One

Symlinks! They’re not just for Christmas. They are, in fact, just like aliases, enabling you to litter your hard drive with shortcuts in no time flat. You can make them in the terminal with the “ln -s” command, but if you’ve got the windows open in the Finder, hell! Why not use ‘em?

This little baby uses the front two Finder windows to figure out the source and destination. Just be careful that they are the front two windows, or you may get unexpected – perhaps terrifying – results. I took the time to build in a confirmation dialog; just edit the code if you feel like living dangerously.

The source code dances a merry jig, over yonder.

Download Symlink-this-window-to-that-one.rb.zip.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

# rb-appscript script by Ian Haigh (http://ianhaigh.com/)
# Thu Dec 17 16:50:08 EST 2009

# Looks at the front two Finder windows, and makes a symlink from the first
# window to the second. If there's something selected in the first window, it
# will loop through all the items and make them symlinks in the second.
# Otherwise, it will figure out the target of the first window, and symlink
# that.	Just make sure that the SOURCE WINDOW is the frontmost, and the
# destination window is next in the stacking order.

require 'appscript'
require "osax"
sa = OSAX.osax("standardadditions")

#  set "paranoid" to false if you don't want to confirm the symlink
PARANOID = true

finder = Appscript.app('Finder.app')

if finder.Finder_windows.get.length < 2 then
	sa.display_alert("I need two windows open: frontmost for source, the second for the destination.")
	exit
end

# I can't figure out how to get a bunch of files' paths all at once, without
# having to revert to this "collect" hack
source = finder.selection.get(:result_type => :alias).collect { |item| item.path }

if source.empty?
	# get the front window target instead
	source << finder.Finder_windows.get[0].target.get(:result_type => :alias).path
end

if PARANOID
	source_window = finder.Finder_windows.get[0].target.name.get
	dest_window = finder.Finder_windows.get[1].target.name.get

	plural = (source.length == 1) ? "" : "s"
	confirm_string = %Q{About to symlink #{source.length} item#{plural} from “#{source_window}” to “#{dest_window}”. You wanna go ahead?}

	begin
		result = sa.display_dialog(
		confirm_string,
		:buttons => %w{Cancel OK},
		:default_button => "OK"
		)
	rescue Exception => e
		exit
	end

	# exit unless result[:button_returned] == "OK"
end

destination = finder.Finder_windows.get[1].target.get(:result_type => :alias).path

source.each do |item|
	full_path = File.join(destination, File.basename(item))

	# printf("File.symlink(%s, %s)\n", item, full_path)
	File.symlink(item, full_path)
end