Subject: Re: Hidden Files Not Being Copied
From: Ray Zimmerman (rz10@cornell.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 13:56:08 EST
At 6:20 PM +0000 1/18/01, Peter Westlake wrote:
>I think changing the name is a really bad idea. If you try to duplicate
>a folder, you should get a duplicate. There's no reason not to have the
>dot on a Mac. If you really are duplicating, or if you are copying to
>another Unix directory, then you should get a true copy when you look
>at it from the Unix side. The dot prefix is only treated specially by
>"ls" and a few other programs - it doesn't really mean "invisible". To
>most programs, it is just part of the file's name. I suggest that if
>you are doing an actual Duplicate operation (command-D), then the dotted
>files should be copied. If you are copying the files to the Mac, it should
>be optional whether they are ignored, copied, or copied and made invisible.
I think that if a dotfile on Unix is going to translate to an
invisible on the Mac side, then it has to strip the dot and the
translation has to go both ways, otherwise you run into trouble.
In the scenarios you mentioned, it wouldn't be a problem. If you
duplicate or copy a Unix directory with dotfiles, the Mac would see
them as invisible non-dotfiles which netatalk would translate back to
dotfiles when writing the copy.
An example of a problem if it doesn't strip the dot would go
something like this. You copy an invisible file called 'foo' from Mac
to a netatalk volume. On the *nix side you would have a file called
'.foo'. Copy that back to the Mac and you have an invisible file
called '.foo'. Copy that back to your netatalk volume and now you
have a file called '..foo'.
Ray
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sun Oct 14 2001 - 03:04:31 EDT