I created a new folder on the terminal and is not shown in the finder

Question

I came across this issue in my new mac book pro. I created a folder using iterm and I have some content on it (I cloned a git repo). When I go to finder I don't see it.

So maybe I'm not in the right folder... but I tried to create the folder in the finder and I get the "folder already exists" error but still I don't see it.

Im using mojave 10.14.1

Answer 1

One of the most probable cause for this to happen is that you inadvertently entered a name which the Finder isn't able to display correctly (or doesn't display to protect us from the complexity of the underlying Unix filesystem).

To check this hypothesis, please from iTerm go into the parent directory of the one you created let's say its name is foo bar and enter:

ls -aBdl 'foo bar'

The -B option will display any non printable character as a \xxx where xxx is the octal value of the non printable character. This option is very helpful to deal with filenames which cause problems to shells and graphical interfaces like the Finder.

Answer 2

Unless you gave it a very common name you can use locate filename from the terminal. This will list all occurrences of the character string 'filename'. It lists the complete path of all the matches it finds. I would go to the directory above the one you thought you created file in and run the locate command from there.