# file naming convention under macOS X



## gheorghe (Oct 2, 2002)

It looks like all the files that starts with a period are invisible. Some of our customers (that are still working under MacOS 9) are naming their files like that (.something). These files (burned on a CD) DO NOT COPY. Is there a way to see these files and be able to copy?

thanks


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## chemistry_geek (Oct 2, 2002)

Try this and see if it works:

1. Make a disk image using Disc Copy.

2. Set the image size to the 650MB or whatever the size of your CDR's are (mine are 670MB).

3. Burn the disc image (Your_CD_Name_Here.dmg) to the CD.

4. This should work in either Mac OS 9 and OS X.

Just so you know, Mac OS X by default follows the UNIX convention of not showing invisible files in the file browser, the Finder in our case.  There are a series of commands that can be entered into the Terminal that will show all invisible files in the Finder.  I've tried this, it's not convenient because these invisibles show up all over the desktop too.  To get EASY access to the invisible files in Mac OS X, you can download two FREE programs that can do this:  muCommander (http://www.mucommander.com/), an open source Norton Navigator-like file browser written in Java (Yes, from the PC era about 10 years ago), or RBrowser (http://www.rbrowser.com/DownLoad.html), an FTP client that serves as a very good file browser.  I use both programs, but mostly RBrowser because it allows me to copy and paste UNIX paths to change directories and it also has a "get info" feature similar to the Finder, but mostly resembles file browsers/managers found on some UNIX systems.

The easiest thing to do is NOT to name files beginning with a dot (.Name).


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## gheorghe (Oct 2, 2002)

thank you chemistry_geek,

I will use one of the programs you mentioned. I was hoping that there is a way to see all the invisible files on a CD without showing the invisible files on desktop.

Again, thanks


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## Rhino_G3 (Oct 2, 2002)

if you're looking to use a program to do this the best one that I've found is called Snax.  It's a finder replacement that was written from the ground up to be a coco app. It works very nice.


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