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Re: Alias bug or it doesn't do that?
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Re: Alias bug or it doesn't do that?

Just one more note on this subject. My company's software makes use
of a "data" directory - anything placed in this directory (or in a nested
subdirectory) will be automatically recognized by the program and be
available for analysis. Our Mac users have gotten used to the fact that
aliases act just like real files, so they can keep their real data files
elsewhere and just put aliases into their data directory. Some of them
may have tens or hundreds of aliases in there.
As soon as these users switch to OS X, all of their data is going to
disappear. This is going to make them *very* unhappy. And it is going to
make our tech support staff very unhappy.
It's no good saying, "You shouldn't depend on platform specific
behaviors when writing Java programs." It's the users, not us, who are
relying on a platform specific behavior. As far as they're concerned,
"That's the way Mac OS works." And changing this aspect of how the OS
works is going to make them very unhappy.
As for providing a Mac-specific method for resolving aliases, that
simply isn't going to do it. We're willing to use OS-specific code, but
only when it is small and self contained, so it can easily be isolated
from the rest of the program. Anything that requires calling a
Mac-specific routine every single place that a file is accessed is not a
viable option, either for us or for anyone else trying to write
cross-platform Java code.

Peter

References: 
 >Re: Alias bug or it doesn't do that? (From: Greg Guerin <email@hidden>)



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