What are these files and how can I get rid of them?

[jtk]

I'm using a Mac. I have ALAC/FLAC/AAC/MP3 files stored on a Qnap NAS and I use a Squeezebox Touch for playback. I'm working my way through my collection and cleaning up the messes iTunes made of the files (weird naming/inconsistent tagging mostly), adding cover art where it's missing, and converting ALAC to FLAC with XLD. The files on my NAS are a direct copy of a previous version of my iTunes library (I now use iTunes only for lossy files that get synced to my ipod).

 

I'm using an app called Tagr to clean up tagging and I've noticed that a number of my folders have extra files in them. For example, I have a valid file called "04 Boogie Man.m4a" and then I also have a file called "._04 Boogie Man.m4a". I'm guessing these are leftovers from an iTunes script I ran one time to get rid of duplicates, but I don't really know. The extra files are not visible when viewing the folder in Finder. They are usually about 20mb total, so it's worth it to me to remove them.

 

Since I can't see them in finder, I've been copying the valid files to my desktop, deleting the folder, making a new folder, and copying the valid files back to that. It's pretty time consuming.

 

Any ideas on a more automated way to delete these? If they were visible in the finder window I would just make an Automator action to do it, but I don't think that will work if the files don't show up...

[jtk]

Never mind, should have googled first.

[wgscott]

Hopefully you found that those are resource fork files. Normally you can safely delete them, at least for your music files.

 

Apple now uses something called HFS-compression that puts data in the resource fork, so some caution is warranted.

 

I recursively delete them in the zsh shell. If you want to try it, do this:

 

1. Open terminal

 

2. Spawn a zsh subshell

 

/bin/zsh -l

 

3. cd to where you want to delete these files.

 

4. Issue the command

 

rm -rf **/._*

 

 

(The recursive globbing only works in zsh.)

[Garf]

...

 

I recursively delete them in the zsh shell. If you want to try it, do this:

 

1. Open terminal

 

2. Spawn a zsh subshell

 

/bin/zsh -l

 

3. cd to where you want to delete these files.

 

4. Issue the command

 

rm -rf **/._*

 

 

(The recursive globbing only works in zsh.)

 

That's what I love about Macs, they are sooo simple to use!

[wgscott]

That's unix, so will work with pretty much any computer except Windows. (You can install Cygwin which will emulate how a real computer works, and install zsh with that).

[AlainGr]

I especially like the "emulate how a real computer works" I have worked with Unix for many years and yes, it is very stable, rugged and fantastic to do scripts with it !

 

Alain

[jtk]

Thanks! I may try that at some point. For now I'm going to leave them alone though. When I access my NAS through Samba they don't show up, so that eliminates some of the frustration.

[wgscott]

i should add they are harmless. The dot is there so you dont see them. They only appear when you move files to a non HFS filesystem.

[Garf]

Kind of like the obnoxious Windows desktop.ini and thumbs.db files that show up and are damn near impossible to delete at times.

[jtk]

Yeah, after I found out what they are I figured they could be left alone. It makes sense that they are in some folders and not others, some of these files were stored on a PC for about a year or otherwise moved around from computer to computer as I switched. Not surprisingly, these are also the files that need the most metadata work...