MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders

Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by giancarlostoro on Monday February 25, 2019 @02:36AM (#19243777)

Heck I see this bug on Windows and Linux too. It's just how File Managers work in other OS' they're not perfect. If I know a directory is massive, I don't go by what the OS immediately tells me. A few TB sounds like it would take a long while to fully update, but I bet there's a time out limit.

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by bunnycorn on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:29AM (#19244258)

Currently running macOS Mojave.

I've tested with a SMB share, it says "calculating" when it doesn't know the size of a directory:

https://i.postimg.cc/3xn1sNC6/Screenshot-2019-02-25-at-08-03...

It also shows "--" when in list view:

https://i.postimg.cc/66n09YfC/Screenshot-2019-02-25-at-08-05...

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by Dylan16807 on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:12AM (#19243933)

> I see this bug on Windows

What do you mean? The "Size" column is completely empty for directories.

If you right click and open properties on a directory, it will show a size that grows four times per second, very blatantly a calculation in progress.

How do you get this bug on Windows?

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by giancarlostoro on Monday February 25, 2019 @06:56AM (#19244979)

I mean the size column can be misleading sometimes while the File Manager figures itself out. Yeah Properties seems to work a little better. It's usually due to larger file sizes. Unlike the OP of the article it doesn't bother me enough, I've just seen it happen across OS' and have not had issues with it, if I need to know a file size, I have other means like the command line, of course sometimes the command line is another culprit of not showing a directory size as well. Like only showing 4 KiB for every directory at least on Ubuntu.

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by Dylan16807 on Monday February 25, 2019 @07:07AM (#19245036)

> I mean the size column can be misleading sometimes while the File Manager figures itself out.

On windows? How are you getting that column to not be permanently blank on directories?

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by giancarlostoro on Monday February 25, 2019 @07:11AM (#19245047)

I'm on Ubuntu at work and my Windows laptop's at home but there's others who've ran into what I'm talking about:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

Basically: You see one file size on a parent folder, and when you drill in further it changes. I'm surprised these explorers don't try to cache some of the info somehow.

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by zenexer on Monday February 25, 2019 @09:14PM (#19251449)

This sounds like someone doesn't understand how Windows calculates folder sizes. It will never show the size unless you look at the folder properties; and even then, there's no indication when it's done calculating. It might be obvious sometimes because the number is continuously changing, but if it hits a lot of very small files, it won't visibly change for a while.

Edit: Actually, apparently there is a bug related to this in recent versions of Windows, but it's still a behavior that can happen even without a bug.

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Re:MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders by Dylan16807 on Monday February 25, 2019 @08:04AM (#19245297)

Ah. Though that's still opening the properties dialog, which is much rarer than browsing.

Also they're reporting that it only happens with full filenames over MAX_PATH, so it's a very different bug. The base idea of "show a continuously-increasing size until don't calculating" works fine

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