>I have no clue what was happening here.
MacOS has a handful of extensions on folders that make the Finder treat them as files instead of folders. The most common is `.app` which is what almost every modern mac app that doesn't use a package installer is. It's how the "drag to install, drag to uninstall" magic works. The app, all it's bundled libraries and resources are all in this folder. Double click the "folder" and you launch the app because the inner folder structure is a convention that MacOS understands and so knows where the actual executable inside is.
There are a handful of others (notably their office suite ones `.pages` `.numbers` and `.keynote`) which do this too
Re:Contempt Culture
by anonymouskimmer on Sunday May 14, 2023 @04:05PM
(#35940947)
Thanks, now I know. I've basically never used a Mac and was only able to help because of experience with Windows and Linux. I think the folder in question just had a .txt or similar text document like extension. Maybe it was a script file extension.
A couple of years ago I troubleshot a problem someone was having on a Mac. IIRC, instead of creating a file with an extension they had somehow managed to create a folder with an extension, with the actual file inside of that folder.
Also IIRC, they tried to click into the folder, but apparently Mac had hid the file extension (of the folder!) which prevented them from entering the folder (since the name without the extension was not the full name of the folder??). This only became apparent when dropping into the shell and doing a list. From there it was easy to change directory into the full name of the directory.
I have no clue what was happening here.