[IronPen]

Can anyone tell me what the "@" is doing on permissions? I've never seen this before, and I'm an experienced unix user. I hope I'm not looking like a fool for asking.

drwxrwxrwx 51 tsilver staff 1734 Dec 21 18:08 Other
drwxrwxrwx@ 17 tsilver staff 578 Dec 9 09:01 PICs
drwxr-xr-x 5 tsilver staff 170 Dec 14 07:28 Receipts
drwxr-xr-x@ 15 tsilver staff 510 Jul 16 19:16 Resumes

[eggman]

You don't look like a fool - it's somewhat obscure, and I don't see it documented in the current version of the 'man' page for the 'ls' command in Leopard... but if you look here you'll find:

The Long Format

If the -l option is given, the following information is displayed for
each file: file mode, number of links, owner name, group name, number of
bytes in the file, abbreviated month, day-of-month file was last modi-
fied, hour file last modified, minute file last modified, and the path-
name. In addition, for each directory whose contents are displayed, the
total number of 512-byte blocks used by the files in the directory is
displayed on a line by itself, immediately before the information for the
files in the directory. If the file or directory has extended
attributes, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by
a '@' character. Otherwise, if the file or directory has extended secu-
rity information, the permissions field printed by the -l option is fol-
lowed by a '+' character.

[besson3c]

ACLs, right?

[Chuckit]

In fact, no. You'd think that's what it means from the fact that it's listed with the permissions, but it actually indicates extended metadata for the file — the most common example on Mac OS X is probably a custom icon.

[IronPen]

Interesting. I don't have custom icons on those folders. Thanks for the responses, but I admit, I'm still confused.

[Chuckit]

Well, I can't tell you exactly what the attribute is, and OS X doesn't include any programs to read extended attributes from the command line. But there are a lot of things it could be — besides custom icons, things that are downloaded from the Web get an attribute that flags them so the "You downloaded this program from the Internet" flag will come up, and file comments show as extended attributes with ls, and I'm sure there are lots more I don't even know.

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Well, I can't tell you exactly what the attribute is, and OS X doesn't include any programs to read extended attributes from the command line.

Sure it does.

code:

[Tom@Zeus]~/Desktop: ls -l
total 120
drwxr-xr-x 31 Tom staff 1054 25 Dec 17:58 Junk
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 124 27 Dec 13:00 comment.txt
drwxr-xr-x@ 25 Tom staff 850 12 Nov 20:57 iPhone Wallpapers
-rw-r--r-- 1 Tom staff 109489 27 Jul 09:46 lolcat.jpg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 90 18 Dec 18:08 samba.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 685 28 Dec 20:11 work.txt

[Tom@Zeus]~/Desktop: xattr comment.txt
com.apple.FinderInfo
com.apple.TextEncoding

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by IronPen 

Interesting. I don't have custom icons on those folders. Thanks for the responses, but I admit, I'm still confused.

It could be a piece of metadata attached by the system (I'm not sure on what occasions, if any, it does so), or perhaps something you set and may have forgotten about. Metadata can include Spotlight comments, labels (I think), etc.

I'd try the xattr command on the folder to see what is illuminated.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Tomchu 

Sure it does.

code:

[Tom@Zeus]~/Desktop: ls -l
total 120
drwxr-xr-x 31 Tom staff 1054 25 Dec 17:58 Junk
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 124 27 Dec 13:00 comment.txt
drwxr-xr-x@ 25 Tom staff 850 12 Nov 20:57 iPhone Wallpapers
-rw-r--r-- 1 Tom staff 109489 27 Jul 09:46 lolcat.jpg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 90 18 Dec 18:08 samba.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Tom staff 685 28 Dec 20:11 work.txt

[Tom@Zeus]~/Desktop: xattr comment.txt
com.apple.FinderInfo
com.apple.TextEncoding

D'oh. Thanks for that. I'd checked a while ago with "man xattr" and "apropos xattr" and not found anything. Now I see it just doesn't have a manpage.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It could be a piece of metadata attached by the system (I'm not sure on what occasions, if any, it does so), or perhaps something you set and may have forgotten about. Metadata can include Spotlight comments, labels (I think), etc.

I'd try the xattr command on the folder to see what is illuminated.

Yes, a label will do it. Extension-hiding, code-signing, many things.

xattr -l /path/to/item

will list details (though, perhaps not in "English").

What I don't like is: if an item has both ACLs and xattrs, only the '@' is shown by ls.
So in long list format, it effectively hides the presence of any ACL. (At least, I haven't
found any ls option that will let the '+' dominate. So if there's a '@' there, we'd need
to use the -e option too (to be sure). Else, always list with -e I guess. But that's messy.

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

I'd checked a while ago with "man xattr" and "apropos xattr" and not found anything. Now I see it just doesn't have a manpage.

xattr -h

is all.