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#106
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In message , Mayayana
writes: "Tim Streater" wrote | | Content Disposition | *can* be used to send creation/modification date. | I've never actually seen it done. It's certainly not | required. | | I never said it was required. I added it to my email client because I'd | seen those fields arriving in some content-disposition headers. | That's very different from the idea that an email client is "rubbish" if it doesn't do it. I have OE and TBird here. Neither one sets to mod date. Not that I'd mind if they did, but I can't say I'd ever noticed one way or the other. If someone sends me a photo of their new baby it's not particularly relevant to me what day they took the photo. And the date-of-taking would probably be embedded in the file anyway, these days (and for the last several years). [] To give it the same creation time is to say that both files are the same file; that there are no actual copies and therefore the copy was never actually created. Thus it's only an alternate manifestation of the same, exact item. Sounds like some pretty funky, existential hocus pocus to me. I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories; nothing existential about that. I can even have them in the same folder, provided I have changed the filename for one of them. Whether they're "alternat[IV]e manifestations" I'll leave to the metaphysicists, but they both occupy (separate) space on the disc, i. e. I'm not talking about links, pointers, or such concepts. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf If it ain't broke, don't download updates. - Al Drake in alt.windows7.general, 2015-4-4 |
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#107
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In article , Wolf K
wrote: AIUI, each data packet includes an ID to ensure that the intended recipient computer can snag it from the data stream, and assemble the packets in correct order, including the MIME header at the start of the data. If you want to quibble about whether the ID data is inside the packet or not, go ahead, quibble. Anything to keep you happy. the mime headers are *not* part of the actual data. they *describe* the data that is sent. Dear, dear, tsk, tsk, more misreading. But then I knew you would. there's no misreading whatsoever. the mime headers describe the data that follows. that's why they're called headers. I never disputed that. Which is why I didn't understand your comment about it. I suspect you weren't paying attention that I was talking about about "data packets", not data. They go by many other names, so maybe that term confused you. Just in case you still don't understand what I'm referring to: the MIME header is transmitted in data packets, just like the data it it describes. Every data packet carries the necessary metadata with it, else it could not be combined with other data packets into the transmitted file at the receiving end. that's at the network level, not the application level, and not relevant to the discussion about file system metadata. My point was that this principle should be implemented all the way up. Just like turtles, only in the other direction. no reason to do that. |
#108
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In article ,
Alan Baker wrote: On 2017-12-15 4:30 PM, Your Name wrote: On 2017-12-16 00:10:04 +0000, Alan Baker said: On 2017-12-14 4:31 PM, Your Name wrote: On 2017-12-14 20:28:16 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said: In article , Wolf K wrote: On 2017-12-14 10:18, nospam wrote: In article , Tim Streater wrote: | The type of a file and which app you'd like it to open with are | items | of file metadata and have no business being part of the filename. | Many files have such type-identifiers included. E.g., a JPG file | begins | with JFIF, a WordPerfect file includes WPC in the first line, an MS | .doc | Then you've put the metadata inside the file, which is even worse. It | should be part of the file system. This is the problem with mixing Mac and Windows discussions. As I understand it, Mac stores file data separately as a "resource fork". No, you have it back to front. File data went in the data fork, metadata went in the resource fork. no it didn't. metadata was kept in the file system. the resource fork (which was optional, as was the data fork) held various resources. it was basically a miniature database. a zero-length file would have an empty data *and* resource fork. rare, but possible. Unfortunately Apple has abandoned this idea and settled for the lowest-common-denominator approach, and w're all the worse off for it. yep. Educate me. What's the advantage of the "forks"? As described, it looks like metadata with a fancy name, apparently conceived as attached to or pointed to by the file. Presumably it's stored separately from the file. Resource Forks are completely unrelated to metadata. The 2-fork architecture was inherited from Classic Mac OS, and, while still supported by mac OS X, it is used much less frequently. In Classic Mac OS, every file consisted of two separate forks (either of which could be empty). snip Wrong. Purely data files, such as a JPEG image or Word document, did not have any resource fork at all, not even an empty one. They didn't need one because there are no resources. That's why if you try to open a data file in ResEdit it says there is no resource fork and asks if you want to add one. (An optional add-on did allow ResEdit to open the data fork). Mainly it was only applications that had resource forks. Many people confuse the Finder's information as being part of the resource fork, but they are different. The Finder's information is not stored inside the file at all. Would you care to explain, then, how the Finder knows what information to apply to which file? The Classic MacOS uses information stored within the Finder's own invisible information files to understand what application to use with each document file, the three usual ones being "Desktop DB", "Desktop DF", and "TheVolumeSettingsFolder". These show up under Windows, which was another cause of confusion for some users. Yes, yes, yes... ....I understand that very well. But what is the SOURCE for the information in the first place? The Desktop database contains (among other things) copies of the BNDL, FREF, ICN# and related resource from each application (or anything containing a BNDL). BNDL resources map between creator/file types to determine which icon will be displayed. Creator types determine which application will be used to open a document. The original source of these are (normally) applications. These *are* part of the file. They also aren't metadata. And do you imagine that the Desktop DB, Desktop DF, etc. had individual entries for EVERY FILE on a hard drive? If not, then each FILE has to contain information about what KIND of file it is. Each file is associated with a file type and file creator. These are not stored in the individual file. They are metadata stored in the filesystem entry which points to the file. Andre -- To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service. |
#109
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | If you add an inline image that is HTML. If you | | No. | Then maybe that's why your recipients get an attachments. You can't do an inline image in plain text. The image code is HTML. | True, there will be a boundary string before and after any embedded | attachment (image or otherwise). But I can send an email that goes | | text | attachment | more text | I've never seen that, but I guess there's no reason it won't work. A plain text setting in the receiving client will look for Content-Type of text/plain and a client set to read HTML will look for text/html. I don't think it matters where those are. | If you give me an email address (use a throwaway one if you're | paranoid), I'll send you an example. We've corresponded before. I wrote to you this morning. (Or more like mid-afternoon your time.) | No, I've looked at (even edited, occasionally) the raw data form of | emails, and there's no HTML - or any other tag - in them. If the section is marked with Contet-Type text/html then it's HTML. Otherwise it's not. But HTML can be some weird stuff. for instance, email sent from MS Word typically includes all sorts of nonsense, made-up tags starting with "mso-" that only mean something if the recipient uses Outlook. | Well, that's a dual-part email, since you included the plain text "for | non-html readers" as well. (I'm pretty sure I've seen emails without the | plain text version, i. e. HTML only.) I get those occasionally. Mostly commercial or spammy stuff. It's common courtesy to at least include a text section that says something like, "This email needs to be viewed as HTML", to help people who see a blank email. But that's become less common as 1) email is more often commercial and 2) senders more often assume the recipient is reading it as webmail. It started out plain text. Then HTML was added. Both were sent to accomodate people who couldn't read HTML. Then HTML was phased out because it's risky. Then webmail became popular and that caused a resurgence of HTML, as more and more people didn't even use real email clients. Last week I was working for someone who does software bug testing. She was complaining about the ads she gets in her yahoo email. I asked her why she didn't set it up for POP3 in a real email program and why she didn't use at least a basic HOSTS file. She'd never heard of either! I asked her what she used to use for email before yahoo and hotmail. She didn't remember. The conversation came up because she'd emailed me a webpage from Home Depot. What I saw, reading as text-only, was a few lines of text and a lot of space. She works for a software company but didn't know enough to send a simple link. I realized she lives in a world of assumed HTML, ads, linked images and of course, web beacon spyware in her email. She never noticed. |
#110
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
| And the date-of-taking would probably be embedded in the file anyway, | these days (and for the last several years). Yes. But I guess we shouldn't start up the semantic debate over "what's metadata" again. | I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date | stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories; With the same *creation* time? I don't see how. As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the creation time for when it was created. If you look at system files you'll see the same thing. It might be creation time of 2013 and last modified 2010. The creation time is when it was installed. Last modified is when it was last changed. The latter was stored in the Windows installer so that it could be added during install. Likewise if you take a file out of a ZIP. The lastMod time is stored because it might be relevant. But creation time is whenever that copy of the file was taken out of the ZIP. Otherwise, when is it created? You write an essay, copy it elsewhere, rewrite that file, eventually have a second file that bears no commonality at all with the first... To say it was created when the first file was created wouldn't make sense. You're then attaching the creation to a theoretical file rather than to a specific digital item. Creation time would then always have to trace back to when a new file was made. And if copying is not creation, what about recompiling? Were all copies of all versions of the Windows kernel created in 1992 or 1995 or some such just because there's been a kernel32.dll file in existence during all that time? |
#111
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In article , Mayayana
wrote: | I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date | stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories; With the same *creation* time? I don't see how. easily. As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the creation time for when it was created. not on all operating systems. |
#112
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
On 2017-12-15 5:50 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | And the date-of-taking would probably be embedded in the file anyway, | these days (and for the last several years). Yes. But I guess we shouldn't start up the semantic debate over "what's metadata" again. | I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date | stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories; With the same *creation* time? I don't see how. As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the creation time for when it was created. If you look at system files you'll see the same thing. It might be creation time of 2013 and last modified 2010. The creation time is when it was installed. Last modified is when it was last changed. The latter was stored in the Windows installer so that it could be added during install. Likewise if you take a file out of a ZIP. The lastMod time is stored because it might be relevant. But creation time is whenever that copy of the file was taken out of the ZIP. Otherwise, when is it created? You write an essay, copy it elsewhere, rewrite that file, eventually have a second file that bears no commonality at all with the first... To say it was created when the first file was created wouldn't make sense. You're then attaching the creation to a theoretical file rather than to a specific digital item. Creation time would then always have to trace back to when a new file was made. And if copying is not creation, what about recompiling? Were all copies of all versions of the Windows kernel created in 1992 or 1995 or some such just because there's been a kernel32.dll file in existence during all that time? But the creation date is just data that one can change. |
#113
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In message , Mayayana
writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | If you add an inline image that is HTML. If you | | No. | Then maybe that's why your recipients get an attachments. You can't do an inline image in plain text. The image code is HTML. No. I've just checked the raw code of such an email, and the four-character string "HTML" is nowhere in it. Sure, the sections are delimited by separator sections, beginning with "Content-Type:". What follows that is either "text/plain:charset=..." or (for this example) "image/jpeg". | True, there will be a boundary string before and after any embedded | attachment (image or otherwise). But I can send an email that goes | | text | attachment | more text | I've never seen that, but I guess there's no reason it won't work. A plain text setting in the receiving client will look for Content-Type of text/plain and a client set to read HTML will look for text/html. I don't think it matters where those are. But most modern clients won't be able to display the second or subsequent text blocks as part of the email, after either the image or a clickable icon for the attachment. | If you give me an email address (use a throwaway one if you're | paranoid), I'll send you an example. We've corresponded before. I wrote to you this morning. (Or more like mid-afternoon your time.) I've replied. (I don't think I'd kept your email from last time.) | No, I've looked at (even edited, occasionally) the raw data form of | emails, and there's no HTML - or any other tag - in them. If the section is marked with Contet-Type text/html then it's HTML. Otherwise it's not. But HTML can be some Of course, if it says it's HTML, then it is. But there doesn't have to be any HTML at all. weird stuff. for instance, email sent from MS Word typically includes all sorts of nonsense, made-up tags starting with "mso-" that only mean something if the recipient uses Outlook. Indeed. Similar to how Word is atrocious at HTML. (Try this: HTML HEAD/HEAD BODY FONT COLOR=redsome red text/FONTBR FONY COLOR=yellowsome yellow text/FONT /BODY HTML Save that as e. g. sample.htm, load it into Word, save it "as HTML", and be amazed at the size of the result. (Then look at it in Notepad and see why it's so huge.) | Well, that's a dual-part email, since you included the plain text "for | non-html readers" as well. (I'm pretty sure I've seen emails without the | plain text version, i. e. HTML only.) I get those occasionally. Mostly commercial or spammy stuff. It's common courtesy to at least include a text section that says something like, "This email needs to be viewed as HTML", to help people who see a blank email. But that's I get that from one retailer (7dayshop) where the text part says "our emails look better in HTML", or something like that - not "needs to be viewed in", which infuriates me. (Of _course_ they'll "look better" in HTML if the text part doesn't contain anything but that line!) become less common as 1) email is more often commercial and 2) senders more often assume the recipient is reading it as webmail. It started out plain text. Then HTML was added. Both were sent to accomodate people who couldn't read HTML. Then HTML was phased out because it's risky. Then webmail became popular and that Well, it doesn't have to be risky: my client is quite happy to display the HTML part, but only interprets the formatting part of HTML, not any code. (Well, I'm not sure if it displays embedded images; it's so long since I got an HTML email that actually had images in it rather than links to the online versions.) Since it doesn't run any script, it's perfectly safe. But I suspect most emailers use something high-level so don't know if they're relying on script (almost certainly don't even know what script is), so they often break. caused a resurgence of HTML, as more and more people didn't even use real email clients. Last week I was working for someone who does software bug testing. She was complaining about the ads she gets in her yahoo email. I asked her why she didn't set it up for POP3 in a real email program and why she didn't use at least a basic HOSTS file. She'd never heard of either! I asked her what she used to use for email before yahoo and hotmail. She didn't remember. I'm not at all surprised. I think webmail is used by by far the majority these days. The conversation came up because she'd emailed me a webpage from Home Depot. What I saw, reading as text-only, was a few lines of text and a lot of space. Yes, I see a lot of web pages these days that have vast amounts of space in them. Including many ebay listings; I can only assume they're trying to conceal the contact details and the like that I presume ebay oblige them to include. She works for a software company but didn't know enough to send a simple link. I realized she lives in a world of assumed HTML, ads, linked images and of course, web beacon spyware in her email. She never noticed. Again, I'm not surprised. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf A perfectionist takes infinite pains and often gives them to others |
#114
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In message , Mayayana
writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | And the date-of-taking would probably be embedded in the file anyway, | these days (and for the last several years). Yes. But I guess we shouldn't start up the semantic debate over "what's metadata" again. | I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date | stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories; With the same *creation* time? I don't see how. As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the creation time for when it was created. If you look at system files you'll see the same thing. It might be creation time of 2013 and last modified 2010. The creation time is when it was installed. Last modified is when it was last changed. The latter was stored in the Windows installer so that it could be added during install. You are right, the Creation: and Accessed: times are now, but the Modified: time is retained. Which gives the ridiculous (to me) concept of a file that was last modified before it was created. Likewise if you take a file out of a ZIP. The lastMod time is stored because it might be relevant. But creation time is whenever that copy of the file was taken out of the ZIP. The date column in my Explorer windows is the Modified one. I'm pretty sure that's the default (I expect you can force a Created column if you want to see one). [] Were all copies of all versions of the Windows kernel created in 1992 or 1995 or some such just because there's been a kernel32.dll file in existence during all that time? No. I've just experimented: the date shown in a command prompt _is_ retained, so is presumably the "modified" one. (That's under NTFS; I don't have anything FAT to hand to see what happens there, either in Explorer or command prompt.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf A perfectionist takes infinite pains and often gives them to others |
#115
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"Alan Baker" wrote
| Otherwise, when is it created? You write an essay, | copy it elsewhere, rewrite that file, eventually have | a second file that bears no commonality at all with the | first... To say it was created when the first file was | created wouldn't make sense. You're then attaching | the creation to a theoretical file rather than to a | specific digital item. Creation time would then | always have to trace back to when a new file was made. | And if copying is not creation, what about recompiling? | Were all copies of all versions of the Windows kernel | created in 1992 or 1995 or some such just because there's | been a kernel32.dll file in existence during all that time? | | But the creation date is just data that one can change. Yes. It's all just data that one can change, stored by the file system. None of it's in the file. The only reason you can install a program and get accurate lastMod dates is because installers set that based on data stored in the installer. Otherwise it wouldn't transfer. There's no security or restriction on that, assuming that the calling process has write "permission" on the file. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=vs.85%29.aspx Traditionally the creation time is when a specific file was created. If it's a copy of another file that doesn't matter. Every shell32.dll wasn't created in 1992. Each was created when it was instantiated as a unique digital item. |
#116
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"nospam" wrote
| As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the | creation time for when it was created. | | not on all operating systems. You're saying it's otherwise on Macs? Have you actually looked? If a couple of people besides you confirm it then I'll assume it's true. Far be it from me to question the edicts of Lord Jobs. If he says all files were created in 1984 by Himself then that, of course, would be the law in AppleLand. I only know Windows. |
#117
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
On 2017-12-16 01:25:18 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said:
In article , Alan Baker wrote: On 2017-12-15 4:30 PM, Your Name wrote: On 2017-12-16 00:10:04 +0000, Alan Baker said: On 2017-12-14 4:31 PM, Your Name wrote: On 2017-12-14 20:28:16 +0000, Andre G. Isaak said: In article , Wolf K wrote: On 2017-12-14 10:18, nospam wrote: In article , Tim Streater wrote: | The type of a file and which app you'd like it to open with are | items | of file metadata and have no business being part of the filename. | Many files have such type-identifiers included. E.g., a JPG file | begins | with JFIF, a WordPerfect file includes WPC in the first line, an MS | .doc | Then you've put the metadata inside the file, which is even worse. It | should be part of the file system. This is the problem with mixing Mac and Windows discussions. As I understand it, Mac stores file data separately as a "resource fork". No, you have it back to front. File data went in the data fork, metadata went in the resource fork. no it didn't. metadata was kept in the file system. the resource fork (which was optional, as was the data fork) held various resources. it was basically a miniature database. a zero-length file would have an empty data *and* resource fork. rare, but possible. Unfortunately Apple has abandoned this idea and settled for the lowest-common-denominator approach, and w're all the worse off for it. yep. Educate me. What's the advantage of the "forks"? As described, it looks like metadata with a fancy name, apparently conceived as attached to or pointed to by the file. Presumably it's stored separately from the file. Resource Forks are completely unrelated to metadata. The 2-fork architecture was inherited from Classic Mac OS, and, while still supported by mac OS X, it is used much less frequently. In Classic Mac OS, every file consisted of two separate forks (either of which could be empty). snip Wrong. Purely data files, such as a JPEG image or Word document, did not have any resource fork at all, not even an empty one. They didn't need one because there are no resources. That's why if you try to open a data file in ResEdit it says there is no resource fork and asks if you want to add one. (An optional add-on did allow ResEdit to open the data fork). Mainly it was only applications that had resource forks. Many people confuse the Finder's information as being part of the resource fork, but they are different. The Finder's information is not stored inside the file at all. Would you care to explain, then, how the Finder knows what information to apply to which file? The Classic MacOS uses information stored within the Finder's own invisible information files to understand what application to use with each document file, the three usual ones being "Desktop DB", "Desktop DF", and "TheVolumeSettingsFolder". These show up under Windows, which was another cause of confusion for some users. Yes, yes, yes... ....I understand that very well. But what is the SOURCE for the information in the first place? The Desktop database contains (among other things) copies of the BNDL, FREF, ICN# and related resource from each application (or anything containing a BNDL). BNDL resources map between creator/file types to determine which icon will be displayed. Creator types determine which application will be used to open a document. The original source of these are (normally) applications. These *are* part of the file. They also aren't metadata. Yep. The information comes from the original application, or in the case of files transferred from other OSes like Windows, it can cames as guesswork based on the filename extension (for eample, using PC Exchange on the old System 7 Macs). When you transfer a file from one disk to another, the Finder information is automatically copied to the destination as well. And do you imagine that the Desktop DB, Desktop DF, etc. had individual entries for EVERY FILE on a hard drive? If not, then each FILE has to contain information about what KIND of file it is. Each file is associated with a file type and file creator. These are not stored in the individual file. They are metadata stored in the filesystem entry which points to the file. Yep. The files do store information for every data file on the disk. The amount of information for each file is minimal, so they don't take up that much room. You can rebuild the desktop files for disks individually by holding down a key combination as the disk is mounted (from memory, you hold down Command-Option, but it's been a while since I've done it). The process re-looks up the required information from the applications they were created in / assigned to. Only some files contain information within them, for example, PDFs have "PDF" in the first line or so ... if you open them in a text editor. Relying on that would be hopeless since many data file types do not have such information within them, although the growing use of XML data file formats is changing that these days. |
#118
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
In article , Mayayana
wrote: | As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the | creation time for when it was created. | | not on all operating systems. You're saying it's otherwise on Macs? for copies done via finder (explorer equivalent), create time is preserved. for copies done via the unix shell, it depends. historically, unix doesn't track create time, but macos does, so what happens via the shell will vary depending on the command used and its options. more he https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...le-creation-da te-in-linux/5929466#5929466 here's a good explanation of the difference: https://groups.google.com/forum/mess...mac.system/ARr LvqBbZn4/e5Y5Lbf3koQJ The Windows philosophy toward creation times is filesystem-centric; the timestamp reflects the time when the file entry was created on that volume. For this reason, when you copy the file to a different volume, the copy gets a new creation timestamp -- one that might even be newer than the file modification time. The Mac philosophy toward creation times is document-oriented; the timestamp indicates when the document (the contents of the file) was first saved. Have you actually looked? yep. If a couple of people besides you confirm it then I'll assume it's true. at least one already has. Far be it from me to question the edicts of Lord Jobs. If he says all files were created in 1984 by Himself then that, of course, would be the law in AppleLand. there you go with your anti-apple crap. I only know Windows. yep. that's all you know. maybe one day you'll consider learning something new. maybe also one day you'll realize that what lord gates declared isn't the *only* way things should work and that there are valid reasons for doing it another way. |
#119
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"nospam" wrote
| You're saying it's otherwise on Macs? | | for copies done via finder (explorer equivalent), create time is | preserved. | Actually it turns out there is no creation time. Starting from your links I found explanations of Unix/Linux "mtime" and "ctime". C stands for change, not creation. The difference is clearly explained he http://www.geekride.com/inode-struct...e-mtime-atime/ M is lastMod. C is last time the file data changed in the filesystem and is usually the same as lastMod. Apple may call it creation time but that's not even partially accurate. It would only be creation time when the file is first created, before it's been changed at all in terms of content, permissions, etc. I find this to be rather humorous, in a geeky sort of way. Microsoft, a company deeply concerned with copyright income and generally making money from computers, sees files as digital objects. The object is created and has a life. A copy is another object. (Naturally. One makes more money from more copies of copyrighted data.) Meanwhile the Unix people are so geeky that they find it more relevant to store a record of activity in terms of the file system structure on disk than to store the data in terms of human relevance. It's reminiscent of the way one can make tempers flare in Linux newsgroups by merely referring to a "folder". It's almost guaranteed to result in several fuming geeks, "at the ends of their ropes" over being exposed to "idiots". They'll go into long diatribes about how there are only directories -- listings of files in the file system -- and that there's no such thing as a folder. Of course there's no such thing as a file, either, from that point of view. It's all just multiple levels of abstraction of binary patterns. But you'll tell them that only at your peril. Who said this wasn't an existential issue? |
#120
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Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file?
"Mayayana" wrote
| Actually it turns out there is no creation time. The plot thickens. ----------------------- https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...n-date-of-file The POSIX standard only defines three distinct timestamps to be stored for each file: the time of last data access, the time of last data modification, and the time the file status last changed. That said, modern Linux filesystems, such as ext4, Btrfs and JFS, do store the file creation time (aka birth time), but use different names for the field in question (crtime in ext4, otime in Btrfs and JFS). However, currently Linux does not provide a kernel API for accessing the file creation times, even on filesystems supporting them. -------------------------- So there's more recently been created a creation time, or birth time (crtime), which is apparently not standardized at this point in the sense that there's no API access. But it is stored, and Macs apparently deal with it, so that any notably enthusiastic software on a Mac might dig it up. So maybe that accounts for the disagreements. Though I never did find whether Unix/Mac birth time is exactly the same as Windows creation time. |
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