I Seem to remember someone asking about weird file names in their preferences folder, the following from Friday¹s MaxFixit may help to explain:
³ cfx#xxxxx files Files with names like cfx#xxxxx (where the x's are random characters) are temporary files created by the Mac OS X framework code that saves preferences for applications. Usually they are renamed to the real name of the preference file (something like com.apple.Preview.plist). However, if something goes wrong before they are renamed, they can be left behind. Have applications been crashing on your system? If so, that would explain it. In any event, I you can safely delete those files after a reboot (i.e. give those files a color label, reboot, and then delete any files that have color). Why the funny names? The code is using the BSD library function mkstemp(3) which takes the given file name template (in this case cfx#XXXXX) and overwrites the X's with random characters to create a file name that is guaranteed not to exist at the time of function is called. With 5 X's, the number of possible random file names mkstemp can create is 62^5 (916132832) on a case sensitive volume, or 36^5 (60466176) on a case-insensitive volume (like HFS Plus).² Paul Owen --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
