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what is a ._filename?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2002
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I was downloading some files from limewire and completed downloads of 2 files that had ._ before the filename and i cannot find them in my shared folder now? Is this some kind of hidden file? If so how do I find it and delete it?
Also, Adaptation is one of the best films I've seen in a long time... Spike Jonze is the man!!!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2001
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Originally posted by makkystyle:
I was downloading some files from limewire and completed downloads of 2 files that had ._ before the filename and i cannot find them in my shared folder now? Is this some kind of hidden file? If so how do I find it and delete it?
Also, Adaptation is one of the best films I've seen in a long time... Spike Jonze is the man!!!
Anything with a . as the first character is invisible in OSX (iirc). If you're comfortable with terminal, use ls -A to see them.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2002
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have never used the terminal before but would like to get rid of the files. any direction someone could give would be great!
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Senior User
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: Tucson, AZ
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Originally posted by makkystyle:
have never used the terminal before but would like to get rid of the files. any direction someone could give would be great!
In the Terminal, go to the folder where you have the invisible files. To do this, type "cd " and then the path to the folder, then press enter. For example, if the files are in your documents folder, type "cd ~/Documents". (~ represents your home directory.)
Next, type "ls -A" and press enter. This displays all the files on the folder, and the "-A" means to list invisible files.
In the list that is shown, find the files you want to delete. Type "rm " and then the name of the file. For example, to remove a file called ".invisibledocument", you would type "rm .invisibledocument".
Hope that helps. And if it's not quite clear, let me know.
(Last edited by namannik; Jan 2, 2003 at 11:25 AM.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2002
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Awesome. Great instructions namannik. Thanks for the help.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Sweden
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Well if it's hidden, it's probably so for a reason... The reason in this case is that Mac OS X stores the resource fork in ._-files on file systems that doesn't support resource forks (such as UFS). Read more about it here: http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/index.html. Deleting the resource fork might render a file useless, depending on the type of the file.
To sum up: don't delete unknown ._-files if you don't know what you're doing.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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It is an old Unix convention to hide files whose names start with a dot, which are sometimes called "dotfiles". Interestingly enough, however, older versions of MacOS also did this.
Filenames which start with a dot were ordinarily forbidden in OS9; the Finder and Save dialogs wouldn't let you enter them. The reason for this is that they used dotfiles for certain drivers. You may remember the infamous .Sony trick, where a file with that name in the right place could render the machine unbootable; the reason for this was that a file with that name would overwrite the driver for floppies. Actually creating a file with that name couldn't be done by ordinary means; you had to find some other way to create the file and then copy it over.
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You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
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