tech

Making Text out of Webloc Files

Webloc files are the handy little URL “aliases” that Mac OSX makes when you drag a URL from your web browser into a file folder. I’ve used them quite a bit to organize links I want to keep for various reasons.

If you’ve ever needed to convert a directory of “webloc” files into text suitable for pasting into an email or document, you want this handy little command:

grep -h http *.webloc | grep -v apple.com | sed -e 's/<string>//' | sed -e 's/<\/string>//'

To use it, open up the terminal window, cd to the directory which has the webloc files, and type the above command. It will output a list of URLs to the shell that you can easily cut-and-paste into your document.

Update 10-14-09: Just realized that the formatting had gotten messed up in the html encoding, the posted command has been updated now to actually work.

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