[X-Unix] What's in an MP3's resource fork..? [Was: Re: [X4U] ._annoying_files on SMB shares - can I remove them..?]

[Jakob Peterhänsel]

Hi,

Rest assured the .DS_Store is left by the Finder:

1: It's invisible (the .)
2: It's only containing info about how to display the enclosing folder.

Resource forks from user files will be called ._<filename> if I 
remember right.

____________________________________________
Jakob Peterhänsel
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Tel: +45 7022 1014
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On 20. apr 2004, at 4:34, Stroller wrote:

>
> On Apr 10, 2004, at 3:12 pm, Alex wrote:
>>>
>>>> ._FileName are separate files where the content of the resource 
>>>> fork is stored. Mac files have two forks, a data fork and a 
>>>> resource fork. This file architecture is incomprehensible to other 
>>>> OSs, so the most common effect of copying a Mac file to a foreign 
>>>> OS is the stripping of the resource fork. To avoid this, when 
>>>> copying to a Win volume, Mac OS X copies the content of the 
>>>> resource fork to a separate file.
>>>
>>> [...] Okies, so what applications NEED the data in the resource 
>>> fork..?
>>
>> There's no hard-and-fast rule. For instance, I believe you mentioned 
>> InDesign. This one stores the PICT preview in the resource fork, so 
>> you should still be able to open .indd files on Windows or Mac even 
>> if the resource fork is stripped.
>>
>> By and large, you may assume files from x-platform apps (e.g., 
>> InDesign, Illustrator, FileMaker, Office, etc.) either won't have a 
>> resource fork or won't have any critical data there; while Mac-only 
>> apps may store important data in the resource fork.
>
> Sorry to be bringing this up again, but I'm now in the middle of 
> writing my killer Bash script for removing unwanted .DS_Store from SMB 
> shares.
>
>      echo "Looking for .DS_Store files left by Apple's Finder in 
> $path" >&2
>      FILES=`find $path -name .*DS_Store`;
>      for file in $FILES
>      do
>        if [ `file -b $file` = "data" ]
>        then
>           rm $file
>        fi
>      done
>
> Since I figure it's possible that a user might name an important 
> document .DS_Store, I use `file` to check that they're the same 
> filetype as all the other .DS_Store I had lying around to check 
> against. I don't think there's any other way to determine 
> programatically whether ._DS_Store files are really the anticipated 
> Finder-droppings rather than lurking Word documents, although I've 
> been interested to note that all of mine from this evening's session 
> are either 6148 bytes long, or double that, 12292.
>
> So I think it's safe to say that the resource forks of jpegs and other 
> images can safely be removed, as with Word .doc files. But what about 
> those of MP3s..? Does iTunes keep any data there..? What about any 
> other filetypes of which the resource forks are either essential or 
> unimportant..?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stroller.
>
>
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