2009-10-05
Rename files while they're open
I was re-naming a Pages file in Finder when I realised I had it open. “Damnnit,” I thought, it wont let me do that… but I committed the change anyway, and what did I find? Not only could I change the file name, but Pages had updated the name of the file that was open to it’s new name.This is more than a little bit amazing
and, if my memory is serving me correctly, the first time you have been able to do this since the Mac was created.
Edit: Minimal Mac has been updated with a strikethrough. Therefore, the rest of this article is now mocking something that has been retracted. Therefore, the rest of this article shall now also be rendered in strikethrough. Feel free to copy it somewhere without styling if it’s too hard to read.
Man, I love all the post-Mac OS X users, who discover something after a new OS release has come out and then say “wow, look at this Snow Leopard feature!”
Meanwhile, those of us with a sense of history shake their heads, note that the way HFS and HFS+ address files means that file renaming has worked this way since at least System 7.5.3 (and probably before that) and that any app that uses proper (ie, not Unix path) methods to address their files (effectively, by inode) should do the same thing. Hell, you can even move a file (as long as you don’t cross volume boundaries) and the file reference will still work.
Still, good to see you’ve discovered that. Maybe I can interest you in aliases (ie symlinks done right) next?
