Did you ever get anywhere with this?

Everything I have tried to modify AppleShowAllFiles from Self Service accomplishes nothing more than the Finder restart.

This is a reliable way to determine the currently logged in user:

CurrentUser=$(/usr/bin/python -c 'from SystemConfiguration import SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser; import sys; username = (SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser(None, None, None) or [None])[0]; username = [username,""][username in [u"loginwindow", None, u""]]; sys.stdout.write(username + "
");')

@ryan.ball

That's exactly what I always use to collect the current user.

This is what I was testing before I started adding if statements to make it toggle.

It works from BBEdit, but not from Self Service.

#!/bin/bash

CurrentUser=`python -c 'from SystemConfiguration import SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser; import sys; username = (SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser(None, None, None) or [None])[0]; username = [username,""][username in [u"loginwindow", None, u""]]; sys.stdout.write(username + "
");'`

defaults write /Users/$CurrentUser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

/bin/sleep 2

killall Finder

exit 0

Just to be sure, try it like this:

#!/bin/bash

CurrentUser=`python -c 'from SystemConfiguration import SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser; import sys; username = (SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser(None, None, None) or [None])[0]; username = [username,""][username in [u"loginwindow", None, u""]]; sys.stdout.write(username + "
");'`

/usr/bin/defaults write "/Users/$CurrentUser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist" AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

/bin/sleep 2

killall Finder

exit 0

Thank you for your help. That gave the same result.

The end result with all my attempts to switch AppleShowAllFiles is a com.apple.finder.plist file that is set back to factory default.

I normally use /usr/bin/defaults write. Removed it last night when trying to wrap my head around what's going on. :-)

Interestingly, this one is working, but only if I keep the

sudo -u

If I remove it it's back to failing.

#!/bin/bash

CurrentUser=`who | grep "console" | awk '{print $1}'`

STATUS=`sudo -u $CurrentUser defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles`
if [ $STATUS == TRUE ];
then
    sudo -u $CurrentUser defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
else
     sudo -u $CurrentUser defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
fi
killall Finder

I found it here

Adding the su -u to

su -u /usr/bin/defaults write "/Users/$CurrentUser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist" AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

does not work.

Do it like this:

sudo -s -u "$CurrentUser" defaults write "/Users/$CurrentUser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist" AppleShowAllFiles -bool true