How do I remove the “extended attributes” on a fil

Question

I have an AppleScript script that runs a stress test. Part of the test is to open, save, and close certain files. Somehow, the files have picked up some "extended attributes" that prohibit the files from being saved. That causes the stress test to fail.

How do I remove the extended attributes?

Answer 1

Another recursive approach:

# change directory to target folder:
cd /Volumes/path/to/folder

# find all things of type "f" (file), 
# then pipe "|" each result as an argument (xargs -0) 
# to the "xattr -c" command:
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 xattr -c

# Sometimes you may have to use a star * instead of the dot.
# The dot just means "here" (whereever your cd'd to
find * -type f -print0 | xargs -0 xattr -c

Answer 2

Removing a Single Attribute on a Single File

See Bavarious's answer.

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To Remove All Extended Attributes On a Single File

Use xattr with the -c flag to "clear" the attributes:

xattr -c yourfile.txt

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To Remove All Extended Attributes On Many Files

To recursively remove extended attributes on all files in a directory, combine the -c "clear" flag with the -r recursive flag:

xattr -rc /path/to/directory

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A Tip for Mac OS X Users

Have a long path with spaces or special characters?

Open Terminal.app and start typing xattr -rc, include a trailing space, and then then drag the file or folder to the Terminal.app window and it will automatically add the full path with proper escaping.

Answer 3

Try using:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine directoryname

This takes care of recursively removing the pesky attribute everywhere.

Answer 4

Use the xattr command. You can inspect the extended attributes:

$ xattr s.7z
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms
com.apple.quarantine

and use the -d option to delete one extended attribute:

$ xattr -d com.apple.quarantine s.7z
$ xattr s.7z
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms

you can also use the -c option to remove all extended attributes:

$ xattr -c s.7z
$ xattr s.7z

xattr -h will show you the command line options, and xattr has a man page.