Hidden files in OSX (Tiger 10.4)

There are three ways to hide a file in Finder:

1. /.hidden
2. file starts with a .
3. have the attribute V

To view the attributes of a file use:

/Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo ~/Desktop/.DS_Store

Possible attributes are:

Each letter corresponds to a file attribute: an uppercase letter indicates that the attribute bit is set (1), a lowercase letter indicates that it is not (0).

A | a    Alias file
B | b    Has bundle
C | c    Custom icon (allowed on folders)
D | d    Located on the desktop (allowed on folders)
E | e    Extension is hidden (allowed on folders)
I | i    Inited - Finder is aware of this file and has given it a location in a window.
         (allowed on folders)
L | l    Locked
M | m    Shared (can run multiple times)
N | n    File has no INIT resource
S | s    System file (name locked)
T | t    "Stationery Pad" file
V | v    Invisible (allowed on folders)

Since I realy like to see whats on my disk you can use the following tool to show all files in Finder: http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html – Which does a lot more than that 🙂

Alternatively you can use the following command to view all the files:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES