File Extensions, bah

22nd January 2004

The Mac OS X Filesystem: Filename Extensions:

Some Macintosh software developers react to filename extensions with dismay. As a means for specifying document type and ownership, extensions seem primitive compared to the type and creator codes and the other rich metadata made possible by the multifork HFS and HFS+ volume formats. However, in the Internet age, documents frequently travel around a heterogeneous network. A document may move from a Macintosh to a Linux network server to a Windows computer. Each computer on this path may have a different notion of what constitutes a document type.

Bah! So who says they use file extensions!

This is one of (if not) the biggest things that irks me about OS X, the fact I missed out on Apple’s OS that used metadata stored in the filesystem rather than a wart on the filename.

Before I got my iBook I had read through the OS X pages on Apple’s Web site, and one quote in particular stuck in my mind, I thought maybe extensions were there solely for compatibility, that the OS still used metadata in the file system to determine types (emphasis added by me):

One minor difference you may encounter using Mac OS X is that Unix uses slashes (/) instead of colons (:) to show a folder hierarchy. Mac shorthand would be My hard drive:A folder:Another folder:My file. Translated to Unix-speak that’s myharddrive/afolder/anotherfolder/myfile.kind (Unix people rarely put spaces in their names and they like to know what kind of file they’re using by reading text instead of glancing at a picture — maybe that will change after they get used to the high resolution icons available to them in Mac OS X).

I smell bullshit. They’re just trying to win round their user base, they have no interest in any of the metadata architecture provided in the HFS+ file system. It is quite clear from the documentation that you should use resource forks at your own peril.

Shame.