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Printing system profiler
#30892 08/21/14 06:46 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
deniro Offline OP
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Anyone know how I can print the list of applications from the System Profiler?


Re: Printing system profiler
deniro #30893 08/21/14 07:14 PM
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deniro,

Might this work for you in OS X 10.6.3?

System Profiler . . . (System Information in OS X 10.9.4) . . .-> Software

Click on Applications

Command + P

In my case, rather than printing 37 pages, I can select PDF -> Save as PDF.


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Re: Printing system profiler
dianne #30896 08/21/14 08:33 PM
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In 10.6.8, the best I could do was extract 80 something pages of apps from a 329 page pdf...the only one I could produce, and the resultant list, which was in alpha order by category only, was totally user-unfriendly.


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Re: Printing system profiler
dianne #30903 08/22/14 01:16 AM
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deniro Offline OP
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Good idea, but not quite what I wanted, though I haven't thoroughly examined my 414 page pdf.

It's odd, isn't it, that I can't just copy and paste the list of applications with their version numbers &c. in the Profiler.

Re: Printing system profiler
deniro #30908 08/22/14 07:18 PM
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deniro,

I tried a few searches at the App Store, but no results seemed to address your question.

I cannot think of any other workable way to print or save the System Information you want.

Trying to compile a series of screenshots in a word processing file . . . since a copy and paste of the list does not work. . . seems quite tedious for the amount of data you are outputting into a .pdf.


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Re: Printing system profiler
dianne #30923 08/23/14 05:50 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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Hard to believe there isn't a program that lists my applications, version numbers, etc. that the Profiler gives. I think I could do that back on OS 9. And OS 8…

Re: Printing system profiler
dianne #30961 08/26/14 11:37 PM
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In Terminal:

system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType

If you want to programmatically extract data from that, add a -xml option to get the output in XML format, then use XML tools of your choice to extract the data. (Trying to extract data from a complex non-XML file using regular expressions is iffy at best.)

If you want to save the data for later perusal, save it as a .spx file (in XML format). Then use System Profiler itself to view the file pretty-formatted:

system_profiler -xml SPApplicationsDataType > ~/Desktop/apps.spx

If you want to see what has changed between different dates, use diff or equivalent to compare such files, saved on those dates, to see what's changed.


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