Snow Leopard: access "hidden" files in file selection ?
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From: Ian Gregory on 15 Jan 2010 22:42 On 2010-01-16, Barry Margolin <barmar(a)alum.mit.edu> wrote: > In article <hipk9n$g60$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > >> What files does the Mac GUI hide that a Mac GUI user needs to edit? > > All files and directories whose names begin with ".". Many of these are > intended to be edited by users. Certainly there may be some that may need to be edited by some GUI users. However, dot files generally control or are related to command line apps and if you are in a shell then they are not hidden (at least no more so than any other Unix). GUI apps are configured using the GUI so there is generally no need to see, much less edit any configuration files. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that there shouldn't be a way to make dot files visible in the Finder if you really want to - only that it would be of no use to me because I would still prefer to edit them using vim in Terminal. Ian -- Ian Gregory http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/
From: Leonard Blaisdell on 15 Jan 2010 22:55 In article <00ccb96b$0$17142$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot(a)vaxination.ca> wrote: > Jolly Roger wrote: > > > You have nothing more constructive on which to to spend your time than > > trying to make every part of a GUI show elements that are better off not > > exposed in a GUI? Seriously - use the right tool for the job, man! > > > I am not a command line zealot. There are tasks which are better done in > a GUI, and there are tasks which are better done at command line. > > Having complementary GUI and command line is best of both worlds. But > because the GUI is crippled (from system management point of view), you > end up javing to rely on the command line only. I'm comfortable with vim, but if one wants to use a GUI to change those pesky dot files or any text file available to them on their OSX Mac, "bbedit <path to filename>" in terminal works well providing you have BBEdit installed. The file will be opened, edited and saved seamlessly. I don't think TextWrangler does this, but I stand to be corrected. leo
From: Nick Naym on 15 Jan 2010 23:01 In article barmar-2759D6.22191615012010(a)nothing.attdns.com, Barry Margolin at barmar(a)alum.mit.edu wrote on 1/15/10 10:19 PM: > In article <jollyroger-9F5B1E.21013315012010(a)news.individual.net>, > Jolly Roger <jollyroger(a)pobox.com> wrote: > >> It seems like you're saying showing hidden files in the Finder is useful >> as a learning tool, to help someone get familiar with the Unix file >> system that is normally obscured. I don't recall ever having done that >> to learn the Unix file system, myself; but whatever gets the job done. > > I think it should just be easy to toggle displaying hidden files. It is: http://is.gd/6kUUu > Similar to the CLI, you use "ls" to list files normally, and "ls -a" to > include the hidden files. -- iMac (24", 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 320 GB HDD) � OS X (10.5.8)
From: JF Mezei on 15 Jan 2010 23:38 Michelle Steiner wrote: > In 10.6.2, only the plain slash, without any modifiers, does that. Not for me. Going from 10.5 to 10.6 removed the / functionality in the "spotlight" like field at the top of a file selection dialogue. Typing any character, including the slash causes a change to a "search" dialogue which defaults to searching for contents of files, with documents listed based on the first character you've typed. If I press the key where the / would be located on a US keyboard (to the left of the rifght side SHIFT key), I get the � character (as it should). No special treatment.
From: JF Mezei on 15 Jan 2010 23:50
Jolly Roger wrote: > It seems like you're saying showing hidden files in the Finder is useful > as a learning tool, to help someone get familiar with the Unix file > system that is normally obscured. I don't recall ever having done that > to learn the Unix file system, myself; but whatever gets the job done. It isn't so much the .hidden files I am after, it is the unix directories such as /etc /usr /volumes etc. This is sort for a crash course for me. It isn't a question of exploring the system to learn, it is a question of finding ways to convert all the functionality I have on VMS to Unix. So there is a lot to learn ASAP. So having the easiest tools to find what there is in Unix is very useful, and the finder one one such useful tool to look/explore to find out where apps , config files etc are located. Just as an example: on VMS, TFTP files would be located in TCPIP$TFTP_ROOT:[name_of_device] . So, I had to do some research (Mr Google is of help here) to find out that by default, they are located in /private/tftpboot and that there is no securirty that restrict "device1" to the subdirectory "device1" under that root directory. And yes, /private is one of those directories which are hidden by the finder and by the dock. |