You can show and hide invisible . files (dotfiles) in the Finder using the
defaults command in the Terminal:
Show all:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles '1'
Hide all:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles '0'
Then relaunch the Finder:
kill -1 `ps auxc | grep Finder | awk '{print $2}'`
If the invibility bit has been set by another method than prepending a . before the filename, you may be better off with an application that can hide/show these files/folders that have an 'invisible' flag set:
http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new_searc...rch=hide+folder
or
http://www.tice.de/m4e/a_software/c_invisibles.html
(Yes, there is an English version.)
Making files invisible
It is also possible to selectively make files & directories invisible rather easily.
If the file/directory to be made invisible is on the root level, the easiest solution is probably to add 'dirname' (where 'dirname' is the file/directory to be hidden) to the
.hidden file that lists items on the root level of the boot volume (
/) to keep hidden from the Finder. Then relaunch the Finder to affect the change. Lanuch Terminal.app and issue these commands exactly as they appear below:
sudo -s
cp -p /.hidden /.hidden.default
echo 'dirname' >> /.hidden
exit
kill -1 `ps aucx | grep Finder | awk '{print $2}'`
Alternately, if you have the Developer Tools installed, you can set the directory's invisbility bit:
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /dirname
If it is a non-root level directory to be made invisible, the command would be along these lines:
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/drivename/dirname
This will set the visiblity bit of the named file/directory on the non-boot drive, thus making it invisible to the Finder.
