> On Oct 7, 2016, at 5:03 PM, Gabriel Zachmann <z...@tu-clausthal.de> wrote: > > One thing that surprised me a little, in light of the fact that aliases are > completely different from symlinks, > is that > [url getResourceValue: &isAlias forKey: NSURLIsAliasFileKey error: nil] > yields true for both aliases and symlinks. > Similarly, the method URLByResolvingAliasFileAtURL: seems to resolve both > aliases and symlinks just fine.
It’s just trying to hide the difference between aliases and symlinks, since to a reader they’re equivalent (a file that acts as a pointer to another file.) Similar to how the Finder calls both of them ‘aliases’. (If you’re curious about why both exist, it’s because aliases date back to System 7 in 1991, ten years before Apple adopted a Unix-based OS. They’re still around because they offer features that symlinks don’t, as well as for backward compatibility. Backward compatibility is also why aliases aren’t traversed semi-automatically by the filesystem the way symlinks are.) —Jens _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
