Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!udel!princeton!phoenix!bskendig
From: bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Finder bug with ./ files?
Message-ID: <11882@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 2 Dec 89 19:33:45 GMT
References: <5169@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <17567@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Organization: Systems Engineering, NASA Space Station Freedom Project
Lines: 42

In article <17567@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> erics@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Eric Schlegel) writes:
>In article <5169@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> stuart@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) writes:
>>I had a finder crash the other day while copying files from
>>my harddisk to the floppy drive.  I finally traced it down
>>to files with names that began with "./" .  If I copied
>>a file with that prefix, the progress bar would come up,
>>show progress in reading the file, then finder would crash
>>as soon as it put up the notice about writing to the floppy.
>
>This is a known feature (??) of the Mac. A file that starts with a dot is
>assumed to be a driver resource, and if you try to open it, the system
>tries to open a driver in the system file. and BOOM...
>
>You just have to not name files starting with a dot.

Hm, this could be more of a problem than first meets the eye...

Unix happens to like files with periods at the beginning of their
names.  (For those of you who are VMS-lovers [ugh], a .file is
'invisible' and will not be shown under a normal directory listing.
This is how you keep those boring login files and others from showing
up all the time...)

Now, ordinarily, this would cause no problem for the Finder, because
the Finder shouldn't mess with Unix files.  But now we have
AppleShare...

I regularly use AppleShare to mount my Unix directory on my Mac over
EtherTalk.  This gives me easy access to my Unix files (and makes it
really easy to use files pulled off comp.binaries.mac!).  Does this
mean that if I dare try to do anything with my .login, or .cshrc, or
.emacs, or .anythingelse from the Finder, my Mac will go bye-byes?

::shudder::

     << Brian >>

-- 
| Brian S. Kendig       |  I feel more like I   | bskendig                   |
| Computer Engineering  |  did when I got here  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU     |
| Princeton University  |       than I do now.  | @PUCC.BITNET               |
| Systems Engineering, NASA Space Station Freedom / General Electric WP3     |