Forum:Mac Osx Confusing Vcf With Vcard

Question

[jjc]

We have had some problems using Variant Call Format files on a Mac.

A symptom of our troubles is entries in

/var/log/system.log

like:

Mar 25 11:39:25 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local com.apple.quicklook.satellite[10039]: vCard Syntax Error, character: 1401 : I
Mar 25 11:39:25 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local com.apple.quicklook.satellite[10039]: Malformed BEGIN
Mar 25 11:39:25 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local com.apple.quicklook.satellite[10039]: ##fileformat=VCFv4.1

or:

Mar 25 14:06:05 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local mdworker[585]: ##filef
Mar 25 14:06:05 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local mdworker[585]: vCard Syntax Error, character: 7 : f
Mar 25 14:06:05 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local mdworker[585]: Malformed BEGIN
Mar 25 14:06:05 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local mdworker[585]: ##fileformat=V
Mar 25 14:06:05 Jeremys-MacBook-Pro.local mdworker[585]: vCard Syntax Error, character: 14 : V

This could be problematic since at least some of this processes seem to read the entirety of VCF files, which is not such a great idea.

The fix we found is as follows:

As root:

1. cd /System/Library/QuickLook/ ; mv Contact.qlgenerator Contact.qlgenerator.BAD
2. cd /System/Library/Spotlight/ ; mv vCard.mdimporter vCard.mdimporter.BAD

Two further steps that we did, and which appear to be unnecessary are:

• Go to System Preferences/Spotlight and uncheck Contacts<
• In Finder, select Get Info on any .vcf file, and modify the Open with: entry, e.g. to TextEdit, and then apply to all with Change All..

[Istvan Albert]

I would suggest to keep the type as Tip rather than Question

[Josh Herr]

My fault... I was trying to organize and saw it initially as a question why the bug is happening, but I totally can see it as a tip too...

[jts]

I filed a bug with Apple reporting this 6 months ago but they have not responded.

[jason.r.gallant]

Great! Thanks for this, My Mac completely runs out of disk space (and thus slows to a halt) because of this problem.

[MonoNoAware]

Thank you very much for this. Had this exact problem since this morning and really didn't expect to find an answer online so easily. Great tip!

[c9r1y]

Sincere thanks to you for finding a solution to this rare but annoying problem! My machine suddenly began eating up disk space as it was repeatedly trying to read in a vcf mutation file as an address book entry. This solved the issue.

Answer 1

[alanh]

It appears that over the intervening 6 years, OSX/macOS has fixed this bug. However, is there any way to make current macOS (Mojave/10.14 at this time) QuickLook display the contents of a VCF (variant call file)?

[Ram]

If you were to change the default program to a text editor such as TextWrangler/BBEdit/TextEdit, pressing Space should show the content for moderately small files.

[Arup Ghosh]

Just drag it to any text editor like VScode or Sublime text.

[Ram]

way to make current macOS (...) QuickLook display the contents

I don't think your comment addresses this part

[Arup Ghosh]

Without an external plugin or extension that checks for the file header, QuickLook will not able to differentiate between vCards variant calling format or considering .vcf as vcard can be turned off to make both files look like text files.

[Ram]

Dragging it to a text editor won't help with QuickLook either. The default application will need to be changed, and dragging does not achieve that.