._files showing up in my folders? How do I stop it or get rid of them?

ldrhawke

Welcome to discussions. Is the actual name of the file(s), "._files"? I doubt this is a native OS X file, rather the outcome of a third party application you are running or a connection with a server or other network (true, I am speculating right now). Before anyone can determine the reason why this is happening could you please give away some more information regarding your set-up (i.e whether you are connected onto a network when these files appear) or any applications you may be running?

Cheers
h

ldrhawke

Where are these files exactly?

Have you tried deleting those files? If yes do they reappear? If yes, do they reappear when you run a specific application?

Files whose names begin with "._" are "AppleDouble" files and are primarily used as a means to store the contents of "resource forks" and other metadata on filesystems that don't support them. So if you copy a Mac file to a FAT32 formatted disk, the file may be split into a data "file" and corresponding AppleDouble "._file". When a Mac accesses files on such volumes, the system somehow manages to integrate the contents of both files and the user may not notice that anything is different.

Another way these files can be created is if files are transferred using SMB ("Windows sharing"), since the destination volume is likely to be one that doesn't support resource forks. However, SMB will create AppleDouble files even for transfers between two Macs. When this happens and a file is accessed locally (ie. from the computer to which the files have been transferred), the system won't be expecting an "AppleDouble" file to be present so all sorts of problems may arise.

Either way, the files may contain important information, depending on the file type so don't delete them. As to why you are getting them, that will depend on if either of the above situations applies. Try using AFP ("Personal file sharing") for file transfers, if you have the choice.

The other issue is why you are seeing the files. In OS X, files whose names begin with a dot "." should be invisible. If they are not, then you may have used a third party utility to reveal invisible files. To hide them again, you could try entering these commands in "/Applications" > "Utilities" > "Termnal.app":<pre>defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool false
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'</pre>Also, you may be able to reconstitute the separate files back. If both "file" and "._file" are in the same directory, try:<pre>/System/Library/CoreServices/FixupResourceForks /path/to/folder</pre>You may want to test it out on a copy of a folder containing these files first (the command doesn't work on individual files). See ' man FixupResourceForks' for details.

biovizier:

Just want to mention how much I appreciate your answer. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in OSX but I had not heard the details of invisible files and resource forks before, your post was very informative.

Also answers a question of why I got a strange set of files from a client just a month ago in which none of the files displayed proper icons and would not open but there was a separate folder inside each folder labeled Resource Forks. I immediately assumed info had been split off from the original files but had no idea why. The client was using a brand new mini USB drive that fit on his keychain. Obviously it was formatted for PC's and he didn't know he needed to reformat it for a Mac.

I had to ask for a new disk and he sent a CD and all files were good so they clearly were damaged by the USB drive. Is there any way to reassemble such files to avoid asking for a replacement?

Iderhawke:

What is still left unaswered is why this happened in the first place. The most obvious way invisible files become visible is that you used a utility program such as Cocktail, Tiger Cache Cleaner or Onyx (there are about a dozen more)and clicked on the box that said Show Invisible Files. If you have any such programs best to open them and check settings and make sure that one is clicked off or it will happen again.

Other than that I have no idea why your invisible files would suddenly become visible.

idrhawke

Please consider giving votes to biovizier's superb answer (I am not obliging you - just a suggestion).

..." They are all removed and the files are cleaned up again"

Note that that ' defaults' command doesn't actually remove the "." files - it just makes them hidden in "Finder" (as they are supposed to be), but they are still there, and there might still be something about your workflow that is generating more of them than necessary...

Copying the files to a PC formatted USB drive would definitely cause the files to be "split", but normally, an OS X Mac (but not one running older system software) would be expected to automatically rejoin the two parts when it copied them from the disk so I wouldn't have thought that the use of the PC disk in itself would be a problem. On the other hand, if the files were being read from the disk by a PC, then transferred to a Mac over the network or e-mail or whatever, then I suppose that might bypass the reconstitution step, with the files ending up on the Mac still in the separate files...

Anyway, to rejoin the parts, the ' FixupResourceForks' utility seems to work fairly well and also works successively through nested folders. As long as the "files" and "._files" are together in the same folder (at the same level), and assuming nothing in the files has been modified while the files were separated, this AppleScript (which incorporates the above command) should work:<pre>set thefolder to (choose folder with prompt "Select folder containing files to rejoin")
set thepath to quoted form of POSIX path of thefolder
do shell script "/System/Library/CoreServices/FixupResourceForks " & thepath</pre>Paste it in to a "Script Editor.app" document and click "Run". However, given that the command modifies the actual files and does so through nested folders, it might be a good idea to work on copies in case something goes wrong...

Biovizier:

Once again, thanks for the info. The files were copied from a Mac to the USB drive to another Mac, then sent to my iDisk which I then downloaded. The original mac might have been running OS9.