Re: NSFileManager and aliases
Re: NSFileManager and aliases
- Subject: Re: NSFileManager and aliases
- From: Charles Srstka <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 17:49:21 -0500
On Monday, April 15, 2002, at 04:32 PM, Ondra Cada wrote:
On Monday, April 15, 2002, at 10:47 , Charles Srstka wrote:
I don't get it. Why do you hate aliases so much?
since they bring so much grief, that's easy answer. No other new OSX
"feature" costed me so much time and work as them.
They offer some nice features and flexibility that symlinks do not.
The only real drawback is that some API's haven't been updated to
support them yet...
There are more problems, some of which are real PITA.
- aliases are not supported by any API on the world save Carbon. In
other words, NO script, NO standard unix tool, NO posix program, almost
no Cocoa tool (unless written in Carbon partially), just NONE works
properly if they are used;
Yes, this is a problem, but hopefully the necessary components will be
updated in the future to mitigate this.
- aliases try to be too smart, with quite disastrous results sometimes:
one very nice situation is when one trashes old application, install a
new one at the place, and tries to run the app using Dock!
This works fine. Aliases store both a path and the file's entry in the
file system. When you delete the old app, its file system entry no
longer exists, so it looks up the path, finds the new app, and launches
it. In fact, I believe that unless the Dock is not following the rules
properly, an alias usually checks the path *first* and uses the file
system entry as a fallback if the file at the path location doesn't
exist, causing things not to break as easily.
- aliases (just like hardlinks) can't be folder-relative, and thus
cannot be archived properly (ie. so as when the whole folder is
unarchived elsewhere, the link still references the appropriate newly
unarchived file)
I'd have to check the Carbon docs, but I think you're wrong about this.
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.