::scr tell me why you're using OSX, you big geek

[Paul Mison]

On 05/12/2001 at 18:11 +0000, Piers Cawley wrote:
>simon wistow <simon@thegestalt.org> writes:

>> they introduced symlinks/aliases/shortcuts [DELETE as appropriate]

Well, thereby hangs a tale...

Apple's aliases (in System 7 and later) point to the HFS equivalent of
an inode; you can move the file around (as long as it sticks to the
same partition) and the alias always resolves. They're nifty. I like
'em.

In OS X, there are *also* standard Unix style symlinks; they're known
in the Apple literature as 'brittle' links, as they point at a path,
not a real file, and the path can break.

How does the Finder handle this interesting cognitive break? It
doesn't. Both get the same icon. However, you can only create the
former with the Finder and the latter via Terminal; Unix apps don't
dereference the former (so you can't simply make aliases with command M
and expect Apache to deal) but the Finder does handle the latter. Now
*that's* confusing.

Ah well. Add it to HFS case awareness and a bunch of other interesting
edges between Mac OS and Unix.

>People are apparently still confused about the breakdown of the 'one
>folder/one window' rule, but I thought that rule got broken when
>system 7's hierarchical view came along...

Nope. If you have a window open, then open its parent, it's fine. If
you then turn the 'disclosure' triangle (in the parent window) of the
child you were previously viewing, then the window closes (although it
doesn't do zoom triangles; one case where I think they'd actually be
useful). I'm sure people can find this a bit odd, but then I like
folder/window equivalence, and I'm a bit upset that as a consequence of
the Mac and NeXT file viewers being munged into one dual-headed beast,
OS X doesn't behave like that. (But then, as Richard Clamp would say,
it's not OS 9; stop expecting it to be the same.)

>I didn't think they got the bash prompt by default, you have to say
>'yes, I really know what I'm doing' at the install stage to get one of
>those don't you?

As others have pointed out, you don't get bash, but you do get a shell
and Terminal, the app the shell appears to run in. You can choose not
to install (if I remember it right) the 'BSD Subsystem' but I've never
tried, and I don't have the spare machine to trash to see what happens.
In any case, yes, Terminal is hidden away in the 'Utilities' section,
and not something you'd stumble on.

--
:: paul
:: beware my prophetic chickens