Re: First timer: Finder Copy vs. cp
Re: First timer: Finder Copy vs. cp
- Subject: Re: First timer: Finder Copy vs. cp
- From: Dan Shoop <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 21:33:27 -0400
At 1:25 PM -0700 8/11/06, Steve Checkoway wrote:
Peter Bierman wrote:
At 2:36 AM -0700 8/11/06, Michael Smith wrote:
In particular, note that this is a new file; it is semantically
incorrect (regardless of your expectations otherwise) to mis-label
the file as having been instantiated at any time other than when
it was.
The "creation date", as understood by 22 years of Mac users, is the
date that the CONTENTS of the file were created.
In the 15 years I've been using a Mac, I never cared about the date
the contents of a file were created. I'm curious what people use
this for?
:really incredulous look:
Keeping track of when a file was first created of course!
This comes in handy if say, I have a bunch of documents in a
folder/directory and I want them sorted by when they were created,
not last modified, copied, backed up or munged. I simply enter list
view and click the "Creation Date" column and they're sorted.
Likewise I can look a a file's creation date and determine when the
document was created. I might have two different files name
"Christmas List" floating around and I want the one I created in
1997, not the one from last year.
Or I might have a bunch of pictures I took in a folder and I want to
find the ones I took back in 2001 on vacation. I might have edited
sometime later, but the modification date wouldn't reflect when I
captured those files. If I copied the photo to another volume I still
want to know when it was created, not when it was copied.
Whole utilities exist to affect exactly this in the Finder such as
http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/ and is further
reinforced that people seem to expect this behavior such as this user
http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/resources/appledoubledates.html
This behavior is in current use by *millions* of Mac users daily,
perhaps not you or the recent unix converts. Theses Finder users
don't normally find this behavior disturbed b/c they rarely venture
into a shell and just copy their files using the Finder. Those that
do wonder WTF happened to their dates as we see repeatedly in various
forums where they "warn" users against "un-Mac like behaviors" when
copying files that cause these dates to be lost.
Now I myself use various OSen, many others which also harbor the
concept of a file creation date, and while it may be hard for
unix-heads to get a grip on, users on OSen that support the concept
find it extremely useful.
The file, as a filesystem object, is irrelevant to the user. The
user cares primarily about the contents.
You've never sorted a set of files by modification date? Or used
`find` to search for all the files by a given owner? Or cared about
file permissions or ownerships? Clearly file metadata is used by
users and sysadmins routinely.
However even if you don't care about file dates and choose to believe
that they're of no use to users this is just an opinion, and one that
is empirically disproved if you'd talk to typical Mac/Finder users.
Like this guy:
http://systemsboy.blogspot.com/2005/11/file-creation-dates-hosed-copying-from.html
who obviously expects them to be maintained always anytime files get
copied, to his chagrin. Or this person:
http://www.febooti.com/products/filetweak/online-help/file-creation-date.html
Moreover it fails the "Mom Test", when a user sees "creation date" in
the Finder what do you think they suspect that means? The last time
the file was copied/touched or the time the file was created? Ask
your Mom what she think that means. Try to convince Steve Jobs that
it means "when the file was last copied", I doubt you'd win.
Heck, even Apple suggests users use this:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder/
Moreover opinions and philosophies of yourself of current Apple
Engineering withstanding, the Finder, which is the prime user
interface of concern on the Mac, does maintain, utilize, display and
present file creation dates and defines an expected behavior for file
copying, namely that creation date is preserved during copies.
It's incredulous to believe that anyone would posit that 'the
Finder's had this all wrong' for 22 years.
Clearly creation dates on the Mac, as expressed through the Finder,
*the* human user interface of concern, are to be maintained.
That unix and BSD is doesn't isn't surprising as it has no concept of
creation time *at all*. The closest if btime, which isn't a files
creation date but what you and others seem to suggest should be the
behavior during a copy, namely the inode allocation time of a file.
Simply put, Mac creation dates are a concept without any analogous
time metadata in the unix world. However this doesn't mean it's
acceptable to clobber it just because it's ignorant.
I agree. Unless the creation date is part of the contents of the
file (and it usually isn't), I sure don't care about it.
You don't have to, but others do. Daily.
Moreover *this is the behavior of the Finder and the Macintosh since
its inception*. F%#king with it flies in the face of how the Mac user
interface is designed to function.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=7328
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30269
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88107
--
-dhan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Shoop AIM: iWiring
Systems & Networks Architect http://www.ustsvs.com/
email@hidden http://www.iwiring.net/
1-714-363-1174
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iWiring provides systems and networks support for Mac OS X, unix, and
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