Folders, Files, and Others

[iwato]

BACKGROUND: This question is related to a previous and still not yet completed topic dealing with the meaning of the . and .. folder references and the use of recursive techniques to clean and eliminate folders.The MacOS environment allows one to place clippings, references to links, scripts, and a whole host of other miscellany into folders that have the potential -- well, at least in my mind -- to be considered something other than either a file or a folder. Accordingly, applications are also placed into folders, and these are hardly system specific.QUESTION: Is there anything else, besides a file, that could be in a folder that would prevent a folder from being deleted when calling the rmdir() function? To state my question differently, could there ever be anything in a folder besides another folder that the is_file() function would not identify as deletable folder content?Roddy

[boen_robot]

In theory, yes. In practice, if there's ever such a thing, an OS will usually present it to file handling APIs as a file and/or a folder, so as long as you're handling both files and folders, you can be sure that the script will work in 99.999% of the situations... the remaining 0.001% is fancy new OS features for which the authors forgot to make the above kind of translation... "buggy" features if you will.

[iwato]

In theory, yes. In practice, if there's ever such a thing, an OS will usually present it to file handling APIs as a file and/or a folder, so as long as you're handling both files and folders, you can be sure that the script will work in 99.999% of the situations... the remaining 0.001% is fancy new OS features for which the authors forgot to make the above kind of translation... "buggy" features if you will.

Thank you, boen_robot.Living in a folder/file world certainly makes life easier, doesn't it?Roddy