Subject: Re: Hidden Files Not Being Copied
From: Duncan Sinclair (sinclair@dis.strath.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 09:55:38 EST
Hi,
>OK folks, let's clarify something on the U*X side.
Let's do a similar clarification on the Mac side then...
>A file beginning with a . is definitely NOT MEANT to be "invisible".
>It is only that the default "ls" command behaviour is to filter out these
>files, for readability purposes.
>And the default shell wildcard, "*", too.
A file marked "hidden" on the Mac is NOT "invisible".
It is only that the behaviour of the Finder is to filter out these
files, for simplicity.
>Any other thingy (command, API) in the U*X world "sees" everything in a
>directory.
Any other thing (e.g. standard file open dialogue) in the Mac world
"sees" everything in the folder.
(Unless it has been filtered for not being the right type.)
>Given that, I wonder HOW anyone is supposed to justify that netatalk would
>by any mean translate a dot-file into an invisible file.
Because people on the Mac don't want to see dot files for the same reasons
as people on Unix don't want to see them.
>My personal point of view would be to be horrified by such a beast!
>Of course, implementing whatever the community want is possible, such as
>"Veto" files as in SaMBa . But please: don't make it the default, for the
>sake of my rest! :-)
Well the current, default behaviour is as you describe - dotfiles
cannot be seen at all on the Mac - are you horrified? Are you
still sleeping? :-)
The fact is that dot files on Unix and hidden files on Mac exist
is really for the same reason - to keep important-to-the-system,
but un-important-to-the-user, files away from the user so that
they can get on with their tasks without extra hassle.
(e.g. Typical "Joe MacUser" would try to trash "Desktop" files found
lying around. Typical (niave) unix user might not like seeing ~100
odd dot files in his/her home directory (e.g. .Xauthority) and might
try "rm -rf .*" - don't try this at home folks!)
Same objective, different methodology, same result.
Cheers,
Duncan.
PS> If you've read this far, thanks... Now does anyone know if the
latest version of Netatalk compiles and works on Solaris (7)?
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