Stroller- Thank you. I think I misstated the problem. I can change the "application" back to a file, just by removing the extension. But I can't open it. IOW, I can't restore the hierarchical folder structure. For example, I copied the large file as you suggested, and got another equally sized file. But when I tried to cd to the new file, I got "Not a directory." That's what my problem is. And, of course, when I try to open the large file, Finder asks me to choose an application. As I said in my first posting, I can open the file in an editor (I used ed) and see the 30+ megabytes, but I don't know how to make sense of it. I'm assuming the original folder structure is intact, but some header data has been changed. The size of the large file is about the same as my original iTunes Library was. (I didn't track the exact size.) I just was hoping there was some header data I could remove that would make the original folder structure reappear. Way back when OS X disposed of the resource forks, maybe there was something inserted in the header of an application file to replace it. Wishful thinking? Jon On May 27, 2008, at 1:29 PM, Stroller wrote: >> But I'd like to restore the clobbered folders. I used >> ed to look at the .app file, but I don't know what >> makes it an application and how to change that to >> a folder type. > > What kind of Application is it? A white icon with a little red & > yellow triangle or whatever on it? > > An application is merely a folder that has .app appended to the name. > So you can probably `cp -rvf ` this folder somewhere and then `mv > foldername.app folder`.