When macOS saves a file with Finder data, extended attributes or forks to a non-Mac file system (e.g. resource fork) that might also be associated with the file. Mac file systems (HFS, HFS+ and APFS) store this data along with a file’s data and any forks (e.g. The type/creator codes are not part of the file, but are separate “Finder Info” data. (As a final aside, Apple also provides the corresponding SetFile command line utility, so creating reverse script – assigning type/creator codes based on filename extensions – would also be possible.) (As an aside, a lot of the creator codes can be guessed from the letters used, but some are ‘obvious’ only because they became well known, like BOBO for ClarisWorks/AppleWorks and R*ch for BBEdit.) And any files you have not on these lists, you could do a search and find out what they are. But there are some lists already on the web that most likely cover any file you’re likely to come across. You would have to manually create this lookup table, and there is no ‘master list’ to get the type/creator codes from. in AppleScript) that you could drop a file or files on, and it would extract the type & creator codes, look up the document type associated with them, and append the appropriate extension to the file. So it would be relatively simple to create a script (e.g. > GetFileInfo -c Initial\ letter\ to\ Prof\ Smyth You can get just the type code or just the creator code: > GetFileInfo -t Initial\ letter\ to\ Prof\ Smyth And even then, it displays a different incorrect icon for different files, with seemingly no reason:īut to answer your question about how to access type/creator codes, Apple actually provides a command line tool for this called GetFileInfo: > GetFileInfo Initial\ letter\ to\ Prof\ Smythįile: "/Users/me/Documents/Correspondence/Letters/Initial letter to Prof Smyth" But now, even when the Mac understands the document type based on the type/creator codes, it displays the wrong icon. In Mojave, I would get sensible file types and icons for my older files with type/creator codes and no extensions. In my experience, this is a problem that appeared after I upgraded from Mojave (10.14) to Monterey (12). sit allows me to open these archives with BetterZip.Ĭan anyone think of a way to figure out what application can open an old Mac document file? I was thinking that the best way of identifying the associated application for an old document file would be to extract the Type/Creator tags.ĭoes anyone know how to extract Type/Creator tags with an app that runs on Monterey? For example, some files have the plain text “SIT” near the beginning. If I open the files in BBEdit, sometimes I get a hint of the application that created them. Some files say “ Microsoft Word 1.x-5.x document” in the Kind field of a Get Info window, but most just say “Document” and give no indication what application produced them. Now many of these these files without extensions are displayed as “exec” files in the Finder and double clicking on them is of no value. Of course, in the old days files didn’t need extensions and I didn’t include them in file names. I saved old files from my Mac Plus days and I’d like to open them with applications running under Monterey.
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