3.3. The Many Roots of the FinderThe Mac OS X Finder allows you to ignore the way the filesystem is structured at the command-line level and look at it in a variety of ways that are more relevant to everyday tasks. By selecting one of the items in the Sidebar (shown in Figure 3-4), the view to the right of the Sidebar changes to reveal that folder's contents, or specific details about a selected file. The most useful feature about this tool in the Finder is that it gives you quick access to your Home folder (which is usually the center of activity on your computer), or to any other folder that you place in the Sidebar. You can even place a Desktop Printer (discussed in Chapter 10) in the Sidebar, for quick access to its drag-and-drop functionality. 3.3.1. The Home FolderAll the files, applications, preferences, and resources that are yours and yours alone are located within your Home folder. This is where you should make all your modifications and additions. If you are an old-school Mac OS 9 user, this is where you should feel like customizing your system. And, even better, if you play by the rules, you'll be able to move to a new machine simply by copying your Home folder. The folders you'll find inside your Home folder are:
3.3.2. The Command-Line View of a Home FolderUnlike the base of the filesystem, the command-line view of the Home folder looks pretty much the same as what you see in the Finder. The only difference is, using the command line, you can see the hidden "dot" files that you can't (by default) see in the Finder, as shown in Example 3-3. Example 3-3. The command-line view of the Home folder$ ls -a . Documents Pictures .. Library Public .CFUserTextEncoding Movies Recycled Desktop Music Sites These dot files are either self-explanatory or are files that you usually don't need to worry about. The one thing you should notice is the ~ symbol when you first open a Terminal window. This symbol is shorthand for your Home directory. From anywhere on the system, you can construct a path using the ~ symbol, and the operating system will automatically use the full path to your Home directory. |