OS X Font Cache Cleaning Script
As part of its normal operation, Mac OS X creates “font
cache” files that help it to speed up the display of fonts on the
screen. Unfortunately, as with many types of cache files, OS X
font cache files can become corrupted or damaged. When this
happens, strange font display problems, application crashes, or system
crashes may occur. It’s a good idea to periodically delete the
font cache files, which OS X will dutifully rebuild on the next reboot
with clean non-corrupted copies.
Font cache files are stored in
“/System/Library/Caches” in a variety of files with different
names. Those names all follow specific patterns, so we can easily
build a script to look for files with those names and delete them
automatically.
This script has been tested and to the best of my
knowledge appears to work on OS X 10.3.x and 10.4. It may or may
not work with earlier or later versions of OS X. As with all my
scripts, I provide it “as is” without warranty or support of
any kind. If you choose to try this script, you accept all
responsibility for any damage it does to your computer or
data.
This script can be executed from the command line or a cron
task.