Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 2 THE FILE SYSTEM
Hidden Folders
The folders mentioned previously barely scratch the surface of the whole file system on Leopard.
The thing is, most of the other folders and contents are hidden from the Finder. These hidden
files are mostly part of the UNIX system on which Leopard runs (largely referred to as the Darwin
subsystem of OS X). Later, in Chapters 18 and 19, we’ll devote a large part of our discussion
to Darwin and the UNIX underbelly of Leopard.
If you are curious as to these hidden files, the following AppleScript can toggle the visibility
of hidden Finder items:
tell application "Finder" to quit
try
do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles"
set OnOff to result
on error
set OnOff to "0"
end try
if OnOff = "0" then
set OnOffCommand to "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1"
else
set OnOffCommand to "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 0"
end if
do shell script OnOffCommand
delay 1
tell application "Finder" to launch
To run this script, open the Script Editor (found in /Applications/AppleScript/), type the
preceding script into the editor, and then click the Run button. Then have a look in the Finder
and relish all the other folders and items that appear. Run the script once more to hide these
items again. Feel free to create a Scripts folder in your ~/Library/ folder and save this little file
there as “Toggle Hidden” or some such name, so that it will be available to you later.
Summary
NOTE Most hidden files are there for a purpose, and are likewise hidden for a purpose. Usually
this purpose is to protect the files from accidental disturbance by casual users. It’s
generally best to leave hidden files alone, at least until you learn what they do and how to
work with them properly (some of which will be covered in this book).
Now that you’ve had a glimpse of how everything is organized on your computer and learned
how to move around it, we’re going to take a brief side track in the next chapter to point out a
few of the unique features in Mac OS X, including some new features introduced in Leopard,
such as Spotlight, Dashboard, Spaces, and Expose.