Re: Resource Fork - is this a good use/the right thing to do?

FROM : Michael Ash
DATE : Thu Apr 24 13:44:17 2008

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:46 AM, Chris Suter
<<email_removed>> wrote:
>
>  On 24/04/2008, at 2:28 PM, Graham Cox wrote:
>
>
> >
> > On 24 Apr 2008, at 12:59 pm, Chris Suter wrote:
> >
> > > The limits for resource forks are the same as for data forks
> > >
> >
> > Not true - the ResourceMap contains some 24-bit pointers, or at least it
> used to, as well as some 16-bit length fields as well. Unless these have
> been changed (possible I guess, I don't know) these will bite you before the
> file fork limitations do.
> >
>
>  I'm sorry, but it is true. We're not talking about ResourceMaps, we're
> talking about resource forks. ResourceMaps are just one thing that you might
> store in a resource fork but I don't know of any reason why you can't store
> anything you like in them and the limits for a resource fork are the same as
> those for a data fork.


It's technically true that you can put arbitrary data in the resource
fork, but it's also a bad idea.

Various software such as the Finder will write to the resource forks
of arbitrary files and in doing so will assume that either the
resource fork doesn't exist or is in the standard resource format. If
you store data in a different format then this software will either
corrupt it or disable these features. Either way the user is left
holding the bag.

Mike