Those Crazy Underscore Files

[ketchupgun]

Does anyone get (annoyed by) this...is this something you get from your files coming from Mac platform?

Many times in my ROMs lists within the emulator, my file list is preceeded by an identical list with a prefix of "._"

In the gp2x browser, the first file on my SD is "._Trashes" .. which is a file I do not see when exploring my SD in the MAC finder window?

Is this a UNIX thing? I know OSX is Unix based and there are many things hiding under what the finder actually shows the user...I guess the GP2X is just more raw?

Any explanations would be great.

 

[tomj]

I think this is an eccentricity of nix systems. Using GNU/linux when you delete a file the file goes into a folder called .trash. .trash act in a similar way to recycle bin but if its portable media then you don't really want the file just to be moved to a folder called trash. My guess is that ._Trashes is a similar type of thing. Depending on the size it either contains the deleted file (my guess is it wouldn't as macs are noted for ease of use and just moving stuff to a hidden folder doesn't really scream intuitive). See if you can open it in a text editor if it is quite small it may contain info about the location of the deleted files.

 

[Alex.]

I never could stand myself the plethora of extra, useless files MACs leave behind on removable media. It would pollute entire USB drives whenever I had to transfer my work onto or from one. Perhaps there's a way to turn it off?

Edit: well, look what I just found Link

 

[rememberthe8bit]

I think this is an eccentricity of nix systems. Using GNU/linux when you delete a file the file goes into a folder called .trash.

Yeah, I almost want to make a script to delete that folder on startup. (I use Ubuntu.) It's such a pain! <_<

Oooh! For those with Linux that use Nautilus, there's this. Then, you can just select "Delete" and bypass the trash.

 

[kardasan]

First of, it has nothing to do with *nix systems in general. Main command for removing files in *nix is "rm" and it REMOVES the file. There is no trash, no recycle bin, NULL. It's just that some of the Linux distributions or even just Desktop Managers that implement trash folder.

If you use Linux and don't like it, just use IceWM, blackbox or something like that. Stay away from Nautilius, use MC rather than that.

BTW. In most of the Trash-powered window managers when you press "Shift+delete" files are deleted without moving to trash (in fact it's just like in Windows).

 

[nickspoon]

I think this is an eccentricity of nix systems. Using GNU/linux when you delete a file the file goes into a folder called .trash.

Yeah, I almost want to make a script to delete that folder on startup. (I use Ubuntu.) It's such a pain! <_<

Oooh! For those with Linux that use Nautilus, there's this. Then, you can just select "Delete" and bypass the trash.

Since Feisty Ubuntu asks you if you want to delete .Trash when you unmount the drive.

 

[clone]

Does anyone get (annoyed by) this...is this something you get from your files coming from Mac platform?

Many times in my ROMs lists within the emulator, my file list is preceeded by an identical list with a prefix of "._"

In the gp2x browser, the first file on my SD is "._Trashes" .. which is a file I do not see when exploring my SD in the MAC finder window?

Is this a UNIX thing? I know OSX is Unix based and there are many things hiding under what the finder actually shows the user...I guess the GP2X is just more raw?

Any explanations would be great.

Files that start with a dot are the unix equivalent of setting a folder's properties to "hidden" in windows. And just like with windows you should be able to un-hide them in your OS. for example when typing ls to get a directory listing, adding the -a flag will make it show such files. Never used a mac so I can't help you with that, but there should be something somewhere to show them up. However the existence of these directories itself is not a UNIX thing, it's a mac thing. if you delete files with rm then they are genuinely deleted (like kardasan said), just like if you delete a commend in windows with del, it is genuinely deleted. However some gui-things think it is a good idea to implement an abstraction layer that actually just moves files someplace when you tell it to delete files. In most cases this is a convenience, but when it comes to removable devices such features tend to turn against you by filling said removable media with redudant files and directories.

 

[Blah]

Well since OSX is a BSD, you can (at the console) go:

ls -a
which will show all the files

or
ls -a .*
to show only the hidden files

and remove them with:
rm -rf file

or
rm -rf .*
to remove all of them

 

[rememberthe8bit]

Since Feisty Ubuntu asks you if you want to delete .Trash when you unmount the drive.

Yeah, I saw that as a feature, but it never asks me for some reason... :huh:

 

[Javacat]

The .DS_Store files are created when you use the default file manager (Finder) in OSX. They contain details specific to that folder (such as the icon layout, colours, etc), like desktop.ini does in XP. Unlike XP (Which only creates the files when you make changes to the folder), Finder will create the file upon entering the folder, even if you make no changes to it whatsoever.

I use Path Finder on my mac, instead of Finder. It's got far more features, is a lot more powerful than Finder and doesn't create all of those annoying files. Unfortunately it's not free to use.


Finder has had a lot of changes made to it in the next version of OSX (which is out in a couple of months I think), so hopefully they will have stopped it from automatically creating the .DS_Store files.