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A set of free scripts to help manage binary plist files
Authored by: danielj7 on May 26, '05 12:35:54PM
It's easy to manipulate plist files, both binary and text, with the defaults command. For example,
defaults read com.apple.finder
will list the contents of the Finder's preferences. You can then use defaults write to modify the contents. defaults find searches all preference files for a given string.

What people often don't realize is that you can also give defaults a full pathname in order to work with arbitrary plist files, like

defaults read ~/Documents/somefile
Note that you must leave off the ".plist" extension. Be sure to read man defaults for details on all of it's features, as it has many.

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A set of free scripts to help manage binary plist files
Authored by: stevanreese on May 26, '05 02:12:10PM
Or; You can use the
plutil -convert xml1 com.xxx.plist
to change the .plist file back into xml. The system doesn't seem to care which format the files are in, and when they are rewriten by the app or system then they will be changed back to binary1. Use
plutil -convert binary1 com.xxx.plist
to change them back if you wish.

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