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6 useful utilities in Mac OS X

If you cared enough to need these, hopefully you would know about them already. Here is a list so that I don't forget again!

  • vmmap - equivalent of /proc/pid/maps
  • fs_usage - print all disk activity caused by a given process, including page in/outs.
  • sc_trace - summary of system calls executed by a process
  • xattr - edit extended attributes of a file (e.g. to kill resource forks).
  • ls -@ - list the extended attribuets of a file
  • mdfind - Spotlight from the command-line.