OS X fighting itself over aliases

[prev] [thread] [next] [lurker] [Date index for 2003/10/24]

From: Michael G Schwern
Subject: OS X fighting itself over aliases
Date: 03:05 on 24 Oct 2003
Aliases or symlinks, the war continues.

MacOS introduced the concept of aliases.  Infinately better than Windows 
shortcuts.  They posess most of the positive qualities of both hard and
soft links.  You can move the original file and the alias will still work.
It will work across mounted drives.  Brilliant!  Nearly transparent aliasing!

Except a Unix shells has no idea what to make of these things.  To the 
shell its nothing but some crazy empty file.

Fortunately the Finder understands symlinks.  So if you want to be
compatible with both halves of OS X's personality, you have to make a 
leap backwards and use symlinks.

All part of the Unix half of OS X not groking resource forks. :(


-- 
Michael G Schwern        schwern@xxxxx.xxx  http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
michael schwern is not

Generated at 14:02 on 01 Jul 2004 by mariachi 0.52