Hidden file and hidden directory
A hidden file is a file that is not displayed due to a specific label in the file system the default display a directory 's contents. For file systems that are "hidden" file to have any explicit marking, sometimes conventions in the operating system to be agreed.
The characteristics that identify a file as hidden, are different for the various file systems / operating systems. Under the FAT and NTFS file systems from DOS or Windows, this is a special file attribute. Common Unix file systems often have no explicit labeling for " hidden"; there are files as "hidden", which have a point as the first character of the file name. In the classic Mac OS is the visibility in the resource fork, file, and can be set with the ResEdit program (available from Apple) affected. Mac OS X comes in addition to the standard Unix process a file. Hidden added, from which the system looks to find out which directories and files in the file manager page to be displayed.
There are different methods to display and hide files. In the graphical file manager of Windows Explorer, or the file manager of KDE ( Konqueror ), there is a view for this option, the general enabled the display of hidden files. The graphical file manager for the GNOME project ( Nautilus ) offers to a key combination, which affects only the current window. Under Unix can be personalized with the ls command in conjunction with the-a option to list hidden files (see also Unix commands ). The MS- DOS counterpart to this is you / a
If the user wants to handle with hidden files (copy, move, delete) are sometimes additional steps necessary (such as the above description, that one must " show but " the file browser only to convert). Sometimes it may be necessary to delete the "hidden " flag only, and to set back to the action.
When copy and move commands under Unix-like operating systems ( cp, mv, rsync, etc.) it should be noted that the use of * as a wildcard for all files and directories in a source directory that begin with a dot hidden files and directories not recognized. These are therefore not copied or moved.
- File system