A tidbit for people who like Folder Actions. The System Events app (a faceless background app that allows AppleScript to work with system functions) has a suite for working with folder actions which lets you add, remove, or enable/disable scripts on particular folders on the fly. For instance, say that you have a dropbox folder with an attached folder action to modify files when they are added or removed, but you want to be able to open the folder and add/remove files directly without the script being triggered.
Save the following two subroutines as a script, and attach it to the folder along with your other script (of course, change other script to the name of the other script that runs on the folder):
on opening folder thisFolder
tell application "System Events"
set enabled of (script "other script" of folder action thisFolder) to false
end tell
end opening folder
on closing folder window for thisFolder
tell application "System Events"
set enabled of (script "other script" of folder action thisFolder) to true
end tell
end closing folder window for
Opening the folder in the Finder will now disable the other folder action script until you close the folder window again.
Mac OS X Hints
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