What will happen...

D

Dradts

Official Mac User
if i assign the file extension ".app" to a application or whatever?
will the system ever be able again to launch any apps or will i have to reinstall os x?!?
 
Nothing... i wuz just wondering. I'm not gonna try it out as i don't want to mess up my system.
 
An '.app' is actually a folder containing resources and executables for the program. You can explore this by calling up the context menu on an app and selecting show package contents. If you rename a file to app, I assume it will simply put up an error.
 
I don't think that renaming a file in .app will cause an error. I've messed around a lot with file/folder extensions in X, just to c what will happen.

Like if you name a folder "folder.rtf", it will not show up as a folder but as a RichTextDocument.
The AIM/ICQ Chat client proteus uses this for its preferences settings (they are folders called xxxxx.protconf).


So I guess it should also b possible to name a file with the .app extension. I just wonder what will happen if I assign the ".app" extension to quicktime or something else
:confused:
 
The application "QuickTime Player" already has the ".app" extension on it. It's just hidden by default. To show it, get info on "QuickTime Player", and then go to "Name & Extension". You'll see the true name with the .app extension.

The worst thing you can do by adding a ".app" to something is making the Finder think that it's an application package. Often, it is totally harmless, though, because the Finder uses other pieces of metadata to determine what kind of file/folder an item in the Finder is.

Go ahead and experiment – it won't do any harm and you won't need to reinstall OS X. Just remember to put everything back as it was – if you rename "Finder.app" to "Finder" and don't put it back, you'll probably end up with no Finder. So just don't alter anything that's critical to the system.
 
I guess he wanted 'documents' with the ending .app to open with a certain application. Like you do with .pdf files, for example. You can set Preview or Acrobat to open them by default. It's not the .app ending that makes an application executable, afaik, but I just *wouldn't* do what you want to try, anyway.
 
Originally posted by fryke
I guess he wanted 'documents' with the ending .app to open with a certain application. Like you do with .pdf files, for example. You can set Preview or Acrobat to open them by default. It's not the .app ending that makes an application executable, afaik, but I just *wouldn't* do what you want to try, anyway.
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Right, that's exactly what I ment. :)
 
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