#Res File?

Gnomo

Gnomo

Registered
Here is another quirk about using a Mac and PC. For some reason, if I store any file from my iBook (other than a .sit or .dmg) to my PC, after letting the file reside on my windows box it eventually becomes un-usable (with the exception of mp3s) and a #res file with the same name appears. I’m a recent convert, so I don’t know about Mac OS before OS X, but a friend of mine speculated that it might be the resource fork being split out of the file (whatever that means).

I also see this in my Mp3 folder on songs that have never been on my iBook. Guess iTunes does something to the file when it plays the songs. If I delete the #res file (this is only for the ones for mp3 files), it doesn’t seem to effect the ability to play the song.

Any ideas what that could be?
 
It is windows XP pro. The files are being stored on a FAT32 file system (I haven't tried putting any files on a NTFS drive). I've transfered files both via AFP (using pc-maclan) and smb (when I got 10.2), both result in the mysterious #res file.
 
well crap, i was gonna suggest samba :)

hmm, do you use classic much?

thought: IF you use classic (os9 and earlier) maybe it does these things to the files at some point... i never launch into classic, so i cant test this...

its also possible that something somewhere doesnt support long file names, but thats assuming your file names are long

i dont have many ideas on this.. hmm :confused:
 
It's a common problem when copying mac documents or executables on windows (or even linux) boxes. The mac files are made out of two parts: the resource fork and the data fork - the resource fork contains info about the file, such as creator, type, icons etc and can also contain executable code, and the data fork contains generally data, but it can contain executable code. Since windoze doesn't know about this, it eventually discards the resorce fork (your friend was right), and hence render it unusable IF in this particular case the resource also contained code. The solution is to store mac files on such machines in archived format (stuffit). The documents (ie non executables) can be repaired simply by fixing the type/creator fields with an utility such as File Buddy, or can be used straightforward by opening them from within the application.
 
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