aliases
Links
- From Aliases vs. Symbolic Links (forums.macworld.com)
- Aliases can reference an object in the file system
and contain one or both of:
- Generally they will contain both pieces of
information.
- An application developer can
explicitly indicate to the OS which one to use when
resolving an alias.
- The default was to use the ID
but they changed over to preferring the path in,
IIRC, 10.3.
- If you move the thing it points to,
and then put a new file with the same name in the
old location it'll reference that new file.
- However, it'll reference the old file in the new
location if you don't put a replacement in the
original folder.
- Alias files started to get an
overhaul in 10.6 that makes them even more
"interesting." One feature of the alias that links
don't have is that they can track things on
unmounted volumes, mounting implicitly if possible
and prompting you to attach the volume otherwise.
- The
/Applications folder seems a bit special.
- Let's say you create a symlink in
/Applications to /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.app
- Now you can launch it directly from Finder
- But Spotlight search will not list it when you search for "Screen Sharing"
- However, if you make it an alias instead of a
symlink, Spotlight will happily let you launch it.
