Thanks everyone! Now I see. Oleg.
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Kirk Kerekes <kirkkere...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Is there a way to delete a directory instantly and completely without >> first deleting all its subdirectories and files recursively? > > The hierarchical structure that you see is not "real" -- directories are not > physical containers for the files that they appear to contain. The directory > hierarchy is a carefully maintained fiction. > > Irrelevant aside: > The original Mac file system took this a step further -- it made the > directory structure > totally a visual fiction -- all of the files were at the root of the (3.5") > floppy) > disk, and only _seemed_ to be arranged in folders. Thankfully this was > supplanted by HFS. > > It is better to think of directories/folders as a special kind of file that > contains an index to a set of files that it is going to _pretend_ to contain. > > Conceptually, this works much like classical Cocoa memory management. Each > (directory/object) "owns" a set of (files/objects) by reference ("retains" > the (file/object)). > > When you delete a file from a directory, it is "released". If no other > directory has an ownership claim on that file, it is "dealloc'ed". > > Your (folder/object) doesn't contain the objects that it "owns". It doesn't > really even "own" them -- it just has a "ownership claim" on them. > > From Wikipedia's article about Hard Links: > >> "a hard link is a directory entry that associates a name with a file on a >> file system. A directory is itself a special kind of file that contains a >> list of such entries." > > Note that due to the use of hard links it is possible to have a single > physical file that can appear in multiple directories. Each one of those > directories owns a reference to the "real" file. Each reference is as "real" > as any other. All references have to be "unlinked" for the file to be marked > as deleted. > > The "file" can even have different "names" in the different directories! > > Hard links are the chain saw of filesystem features -- powerful, but > potentially quite dangerous. Note that the OSX GUI provides no means of > producing hard links, or even symlinks. > > > > _______________________________________________ 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: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com