Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!matthews
From: matthews@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Dave Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Why can't the Finder show folder sizes?
Message-ID: <5173@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 88 02:51:04 GMT
Reply-To: matthews@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Dave Matthews)
Organization: Dept. Plant Pathology, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 26


Every once in a while I go back to an old MFS disk and I'm always startled by 
what a wonderful thing it is to have the Finder display the total number of 
bytes in each folder when I View by Name, instead of giving me just "-- 
folder".  

Of course having "real" HFS folders is better than the old imaginary ones, but 
I don't understand why it should deprive us of this useful feature.  DiskTop 
isn't much more helpful; it will inform me that a folder contains "14 
files/folders" but it still won't tell me how much they amount to until I open 
the folder, and then I have to add it up myself - unless of course some of the 
14 are folders, in which case it's time to pull out pencil and pad and start 
manually trudging through the hierarchy.  Isn't this the kind of trudgery 
computers are supposed to do for us?

The worst thing is, I *know* the Finder knows that information.  If you do a 
Get Info on the folder, there it is.  The stubborn thing just refuses to show 
it in a simple list.  How frustrating!

If anybody's interested, I have $10 ready for the first DA that can supply 
this simple function.  $20 if it will also access (read and write) the Get 
Info comments of folders and files. 

Disgruntledly,
- Dave Matthews
  ARPA:matthews@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu             BITNET:matthews@crnlthry
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