Re: OT dot files (was: [MacPerl] CPAN for MacPerl, anyone?)

[Matthew Langford <langfml [at] eng [dot] auburn [dot] edu>]

On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Eric R. Dobbs wrote:

> >I've been told that names starting with . on Mac OS are bad, but I forget
> >why.  I can say that I don't recall ever running into any problems with .
> >files.

> <MYTHOLOGY>
> I have a vague memory of some magic file that could cripple a Mac.
> The stink of it was that the SCSI controller or some such was looking
> for that file by name.  If you created a file with that name it would
> confuse the controller and hang your Mac durring the boot process.
> </MYTHOLOGY>


.sony at the root directory was the floppy driver.  Overwriting it would
be bad, both for the system and for a potential boot disk.  Back in the
day when the floppy ran both operating system and application, this would
have been equivalent to reformatting your hard drive today.  I don't
remember any example citing hard disk drivers, but I suppose they would
have worked the same way.


--
MattLangford 


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