Very Quick Trash Question...

When I opened my Trash, I found some folders that said "Recovered Files." All of the files are nothing more than random lines of code and general stuff that I cannot understand. Are they there from the automatic system maintainence that happens in the early morning, or is my Mac destroying its own files?

I had those this morning too, I deleted them lol Nothing blew up, so I guess it was ok.

I think these appear whenever you shut down your Mac and some apps get rid of their temp files right before shut down or right at startup.

Like for instance when in iChat and there are files that are transferred, after shutting down the iMac for the night, on restart I'll have a duplicate of the exchanged files in a Recovered Files folder in the Trash.

"Mac OS X 10.4 Help

A folder called Recovered Files appears in my Trash

One or more Recovered Files folder may appear in your Trash after restarting your computer. The recovered files are temporary files used by Mac OS X applications. Usually temporary files are deleted by an application when it no longer needs them. If an application quits unexpectedly, the temporary files may not get deleted by the application. When you restart your computer, Mac OS X moves these temporary files to the Trash.

You can retrieve useful files by dragging them out of the Trash. In most cases, however, the temporary files are not important and it is safe to empty your Trash. Check with the manufacturer of the application if you are not sure."

quoted from :

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2267.html