[X-Unix] Can't rm or mv Library/Preferences/*.plist files?

[Jerry Krinock]

On 2014 Jan 28, at 05:58, William H. Magill <whmagill at gmail.com> wrote:

> One thing which I see as a result of this is that ?Many?Certain? Apps -- DO NOT QUIT. That is to say when you quit an App, it does not clear itself from Memory -- but hangs around "just in case" -- this is part of the "instant on" effect.  Related to this is the "memory compression" mechanism.

Maybe, but more likely the problem is that Mavericks caches preferences.  In other words:  Quitting the app and removing its preferences files is no longer guaranteed to clear the preferences.  Shocking to long-time Mac users, but true.

Instead, you need to use the ‘defaults’ command line tool

• Quit the app
• defaults remove com.whatever.whatever

where com.whatever.whatever is the name of the prefs file you would delete, minus the .plist extension.  Technically, it’s the bundle identifier of the app.

When you do this, you’ll see that the .plist file will be reduced in size to 42 bytes.  It just contains an “empty dictionary”.