Re: Mac OS alias from Perl

[Michael Barto]

Yes the alias function in MacOSX is different than regular Unix. If your software is targets a Unix server and not to only run under MacOSX, it is much better to make the links on the Mac at the command line with Unix ln command (e.g. ln -s -which is safer) to test and maintain a consistent Unix environment. Fortunately Mac support of regular Unix is really excellent and ln works as advertise on a Mac. By the way, another "got-you" is the Mac filesystem.  On new Mac computers where the software is pre-installed, the filesystem ignores case. The is not true in regular Unix. For example: in regular Unix, a file name like "johnsfile" and "johnsFile" are considered different file. But on the Mac,  they are considered the same. But you have a true Unix filesystem by reformating the disk to support case sensitive file naming. This has hurt me several times till I reformated my drive. Chris Devers wrote: On Dec 8, 2007, at 7:06 PM, Celeste Suliin Burris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Use a symbolic link instead.  Perl handles those natively, and they can be accessed from the command line. The Finder just treats them the same as aliases. Not quite. I forget the details at the moment, but Finder aliases are kind of like "firm links": while hardlinks point to inodes, and softlinks point to file pathnames, aliases point to the logical file in a more robust way than symlinks. For example, if the reverent file moves, symlinks break, but aliases shouldn't. If you really want aliases, I think the CPAN modules of Dan Kogai and Chris Nandor are the place to start. I forget who wrote what, but modules like (I think) MacOS::File and Mac::Glue can either make the right calls directly, or leverage Applescript / OSAscript to do this for you. Or if symlinks/softlinks are enough, just use the traditional Perl / Unix methods to make those. -- Michael Barto Software Architect LogiQwest Inc. 16458 Bolsa Chica Street, # 15 Huntington Beach, CA  92649 http://www.logiqwest.com/     [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel:  714 377 3705 Fax: 714 840 3937 Cell: 714 883 1949 'tis a gift to be simple This e-mail may contain LogiQwest proprietary information and should be treated as confidential.