RE: Hidden Files Not Being Copied


Subject: RE: Hidden Files Not Being Copied
From: Michalowski Thierry (Thierry.Michalowski@edipresse.ch)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 07:32:40 EST


OK folks, let's clarify something on the U*X side.

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.

Any other thingy (command, API) in the U*X world "sees" everything in a
directory.

<Proof>
Proof program in Perl:
----cut there----
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
exit unless @ARGV;
$dir = shift @ARGV;
opendir(DIR,$dir);
print "Dir entries are: ", join("\n",readdir(DIR)), "\n";
closedir(DIR);
----cut there----

Run this with any directory as the first argument and you will get a listing
of all files in it.
You see, no filter, just a plain readdir() which is the exact equivalent of
the native C-language one.
</Proof>

Moreover, as some people already pointed out, a dot-file is a valid name on
a Mac.

Given that, I wonder HOW anyone is supposed to justify that netatalk would
by any mean translate a dot-file into an invisible file.

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! :-)

HTH
Thierry

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Zimmerman [mailto:rz10@cornell.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 6:36 PM
To: Netatalk List
Subject: Re: Hidden Files Not Being Copied

At 10:30 AM -0500 1/18/01, Bill Moran wrote:
>I'm not terribly familiar with Macs, how do you set a file to be
>invisible?

Each file has a set of attributes stored with it indicating whether
it is visible, the file type, creator app, whether it is locked, etc.

I should also mention that on MacOS a filename starting with a . is
NOT an illegal name. Or to get rid of the double negative ... it's
JUST FINE. I have .htaccess files on my Mac and they've never behaved
any differently than files with other names.

The problem is that in *nix the . means it's invisible, whereas on
the Mac it just means that you wanted to call your file .<something>
... netatalk has to try to do what you want and I think it seems to
be doing pretty close to the right thing, though it does seem that it
could take .files (with the exception of .AppleDouble) and treat them
as .files with the invisible bit set (I see no need to change the
name). This way they would be "seen" by the MacOS (but not by the Mac
user) and hence copied along with the enclosing folder.

Thoughts?

        Ray



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