Mac OS X: How to change the color label of files from the Terminal

Question

Is there a way I can set the color label of a file to some color when in the Terminal?

I know that the following command lists some info about what the color currently is, but I can't figure out how to do something about it. Like change it.

mdls -name kMDItemFSLabel somefile.ext

The reason I would like to know is that I want to recursively mark all files in a folder of a certain type with a certain color label (in my case gray).

I know how to do the finding:

find . -name "*.ext"

And I know how I can run the command afterwards for each file using -exec, but I need to know how to do the actual labeling...

I would like a solution that only involves commands built-in to Mac OS X. So preferably no 3rd party stuff, unless there is no other way.

Answer 1

osascript -e "tell app \"Finder\" to set label index of POSIX file (\"/junk.txt\") to 1"

Answer 2

Based on the responses here and in referenced posts, I made the following function and added it to my ~/.bash_profile file:

# Set Finder label color
label(){
  if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
    echo "USAGE: label [0-7] file1 [file2] ..."
    echo "Sets the Finder label (color) for files"
    echo "Default colors:"
    echo " 0  No color"
    echo " 1  Orange"
    echo " 2  Red"
    echo " 3  Yellow"
    echo " 4  Blue"
    echo " 5  Purple"
    echo " 6  Green"
    echo " 7  Gray"
  else
    osascript - "$@" << EOF
    on run argv
        set labelIndex to (item 1 of argv as number)
        repeat with i from 2 to (count of argv)
          tell application "Finder"
              set theFile to POSIX file (item i of argv) as alias
              set label index of theFile to labelIndex
          end tell
        end repeat
    end run
EOF
  fi
}

>

Answer 3

Here are two articles describing how to do that using applescript, which can in turn, be invoked from the command line.

How to set color label via Terminal or applescript
and
tagging files with colors in os-x finder from shell scripts.

Answer 4

To view them in the Finder (I know, not what you asked) you can use xattr -l, or xattr -p com.apple.FinderInfo, you get a flag among the zeroes (1E), of which the lower bits are the colour.. With third party stuff: hfsdebug (use with sudo) to get a lot of info, among which a readable colour label.

To change them with third part stuff: osxutils has a setlabel command.