Talk:Hierarchical File System (Apple)

History

First sentence - computers and hierarchical file systems existed long before the Apple ; clarify by saying "On microcmputer systems" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.120.81.73 (talk) 13:50, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

First paragraph under history needs editing to reflect accurate information on MFS. MFS permits file names of up to 255 characters in length (not 31). Depending on which version of the Finder used, either a 63 characters (very early Finder) or 31 character (later Finder) limit is further imposed. —204.42.16.173 00:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Source? AlistairMcMillan 14:24, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Macintosh Q&A (March 93) see answer to question 3 —204.42.21.167 23:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Now here: http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_13/104-117_Q_As.html SimonReznick (talk) 23:30, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Dig Bisques

In the external link to MacTech's November 1985 article on HFS File Structure Explained one of the example catalog node (Cnode) names is "Letter to Birks, Druffey, & Co." This seems to be a fairly coincidental name, as it very nearly matches the last names of Patrick Dirks and Bill Bruffy, who have been credited in this Wikipedia article with doing work on creating HFS. Now if only someone (other than Dan Allen) can verify his book "On Macintosh Programming" (ISBN 0-201-51737-X) contains the reference. —204.42.20.41 04:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

U.S. Patent 4945475 lists Bill M. Bruffey (note the subtle spelling difference) and Patrick W. Dirks as inventors of HFS. The patent was granted July 31, 1990, filed November 21, 1989, and is a continuation of an application filed October 30, 1986. It seems to contain a fairly technical description of a hierarchical filing system in general and not all of the specifics of the HFS found in Mac OS. The assignee of the patent is Apple Computer, Inc. According to Amazon.com, the inside flap of the book "Inside the JavaOS Operating System" (ISBN 0-201-18393-5) says that: "...Bill Bruffey of the MacOS group[...] is a great engineer who designed the Mac's innovative file system--the Hierarchical File System (HFS)." —204.42.20.6 03:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Tracks and sectors

I skimmed the main article and may have missed it, but if I did, somebody might point it out here.

Does Apple's Hierarchical File System let you write directly to tracks and sectors?

I found a lot of links to go somewhere else, but I looked all over this article for some kind of a clue as to how the file system works. Instead of describing the Hierarchical File System in ways that may contrast it with the PC FAT system (which I have no idea how it works), there ought to be a description comparing it with the only file system I am familiar with, CBM DOS with its reliance on a BAM. Somewhere there should be at least one reference to a Track or a Sector. Where is it? As it stands, the main article doesn't make any sense, and essentially tells me to go somewhere else to figure out what they are talking about. I am not a Unix programmer, nor am I a PC user/programmer. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 22:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Does Apple's Hierarchical File System let you write directly to tracks and sectors? Few file system implementations let you write directly to tracks and sectors; the whole point of the file system code is to allow software to read and write files without having to know where they are on the physical drive.

Somewhere there should be at least one reference to a Track or a Sector. The drive may itself either 1) not have tracks and sectors - an SSD doesn't - or 2) might hide them from you in its firmware, with the disk driver referring to logical blocks.

The references to blocks in the storage would be in the file extents, which are stored in either the Catalog File File Record for the file or in the Extent Overflow File; see Hierarchical File System (Apple) § Design. Guy Harris (talk) 02:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Hierarchical File System. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070927021136/http://mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.01/01.12/HFSFileStructure/ to http://mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.01/01.12/HFSFileStructure/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

No clumps mention

There's no mention about clumps or sequences of allocation blocks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Woreno (talk • contribs) 11:05, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

The Limitations section

When comparing various file format wiki pages, one will find that the HFS format suffers from an implicit bias. A section of “limitations” is present only on this wiki page detailing its shortcomings. While there are various wiki pages of tables neutrally compare the specs of various file formats, in the page HFS is unexplainably given a “limitations” section comparing it to other formats emphasizing it inferiority and proneness to problems. It is a given that all other file formats suffer from certain issues while their respective page curators do not allow the topic of limitations to be added as its is seen as irrelevant to the definition of terminology and description of their corresponding spec. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.41.6.216 (talk) 13:18, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 25 February 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Hierarchical File System (Apple), per consensus below. The alternative proposal by DFlhb came late in the game, and may be tested on a separate RM, since it involves additional pages. No such user (talk) 15:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Hierarchical File System → Hierarchical File System (deprecated Apple format) – To me it seems very difficult to argue that capital letters are a good/adequate way to disambiguate the deprecated Apple hierarchical file system from the generic idea of any hierarchical file system, which is the topic of an article on Wikipedia with that name, and also from the identically named IBM file system Hierarchical File System (IBM MVS) that also uses capital letters on Wikipedia. See also the comments at Talk:Hierarchical file system (Apple)#Proposed deletion. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Ping to Locke Cole, DrVogel, Peter Flass, Matthiaspaul, Silikonz, who were involved in previous discussions of this. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@BarrelProof, I think the original move was to Hierarchical File System (Apple). Silikonz💬 22:15, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Current Apple computers continue to have a hierarchical file system, but it's not the file system this article is talking about, so I don't personally think that name is sufficient to distinguish between the deprecated file system and the current file system. If you prefer the other name, please feel free to suggest it as part of the discussion, and we will see where the consensus leads us. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:20, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@BarrelProof, the current one is named APFS, and there was another one called HFS+. I think this is sufficient disambiguation, but you are correct in that consensus should be reached. Silikonz💬 22:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support, with refinements. Since we also have Hierarchical File System (IBM), I would strongly support a move to Hierarchical File System (Apple) (rather than Hierarchical File System (deprecated Apple format)) and redirecting Hierarchical File System to the article Hierarchical file system for generic info. This generic article should have a hatnote with disambiguating links to the Apple and IBM file systems. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:28, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support move to Hierarchical File System (Apple). I came here to say this, only to find that @Matthiaspaul had already said it. Dr. Vogel (talk) 22:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  for clarity, I agree 100% with @BarrelProof that this needs moving. I only disagree on the target. I can see his argument but I'd rather have a simpler, capitalised title. Dr. Vogel (talk) 22:50, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support move to Hierarchical File System (Apple). As BarrelProof notes, mere capitaization seems a bit weak as a way to distinguish between a page discussing the notion of a hierarchical file system and a page discussing some particular hierarchical file system whose creator gave it the name "Hierarchical File System". I'd need to see some statistics to believe that a user searching for "Hierarchical File System" is thinking of an obsolete Apple file system rather than capitalizing the name used for a class of file systems. For the name, same rationale as Matthiaspaul. Guy Harris (talk) 22:56, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

And, while HFS+ and APFS are hierarchical file systems from Apple, I think that capitalization is sufficient in this case, as 1) the concept of a hierarchical file system long predates Apple and 2) Apple aren't particularly strongly associated with that concept, so it seems unlikely that somebody would be searching for "Apple's notion of a hierarchical file system" or "hierarchical file systems from Apple" (which would need to be a list page), or something such as that. Guy Harris (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support move to Hierarchical File System (Apple). As the originator of this cock-up I think it makes sense to qualify the subject with "(Apple)". Leave Hierarchical file system as an article about the generic topic. I don't think mere capitalization, in this case "File System" vs. "file system" is enough to distinguish the two. Peter Flass (talk) 14:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Guy Harris and Peter Flass. Capitalization is enough to disambiguate between this usage and the use by IBMhierarchical file system. I believe the Apple file system to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and as per WP:ONEOTHER, we can use a hatnote for the IBM variant. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Just to clarify, the use by IBM has the same capitalization on Wikipedia, so the capitalization does not really "disambiguate between this usage and the use by IBM" at all. The comment also says "Oppose per Guy Harris and Peter Flass", which is hard to understand since Guy Harris and Peter Flass have both expressed support for adding a disambiguating term to the title of the article about the Apple file system. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:12, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Fixed. I misread the two earlier comments. I still think it's unnecessary to dab this per WP:ONEOTHER. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:27, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, Locke Cole's comment needs clarification as to 1) what "Oppose per" means and 2) what "this usage" is in "Capitalization is enough to disambiguate between this usage and the use by IBM.". Guy Harris (talk) 19:23, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  See also the page view statistics, where it is clear amongst the three pages being discussed the Apple filesystem is the primary topic. Switch it to "all-time" and the comparison becomes even clearer. Since 2015 (as far back as the comparison can go), the Apple file system article has had a quarter million views, while the IBM file system is under 9,000 views. It's too early to say how Hierarchical file system (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) will shake out over time as that article is relatively new. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  A page view comparison with Hierarchical file system does not seem valid at this point, since that article has only existed for four days. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:50, 26 February 2023 (UTC)‎

  You'll note I said it was too early to say with regard to that article, though I'm not the one trying to move articles around either on the basis of said four-day old article. It existing at the lowercase variant ought to be good enough IMO. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:30, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think that's enough disambiguation. Dr. Vogel (talk) 01:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  Well maybe you ought to go tell the folks who wrote our article titles policy at WP:DIFFCAPS: Ambiguity may arise when typographically near-identical expressions have distinct meanings, e.g. Iron maiden vs. Iron Maiden, or Ice cube vs. Ice Cube. The general approach is that whatever readers might type in the search box, they are guided as swiftly as possible to the topic they might reasonably be expected to be looking for, by such disambiguation techniques as hatnotes and/or disambiguation pages. We can solve the "issue" here easily through a hatnote without moving a page with 250K+ views from the most WP:CONCISE title that it fits in... —Locke Cole • t • c 05:37, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  Hierarchical File System (Apple) should do. BhamBoi (talk) 05:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  It seems my original suggestion is not popular. I thus support the suggestion from others to use Hierarchical File System (Apple), since I think disambiguation is needed. I don't think it's a WP:ONEOTHER situation, as there are at least two other articles this term could be ambiguously referring to. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose initial proposal and alternative proposed by others, weakly support status quo. I'm more of an adept of WP:DIFFCAPS than the average editor, admittedly. Here, despite the prevalence of hierarchical file systems, the general concept is somewhat obscure, precisely because file systems are almost-universally hierarchical; I believe Apple's HFS is the clearly primary term, and caps are enough to disambiguate. I'll note that it's pretty common for file systems to be named after generic concepts, like File Allocation Table (the well-known FAT file system). See this, which quotes a source called Basics of Digital Forensics, that eludes the generic terms and focuses on the file systems named after those concepts.

However, I would strongly support a move to to HFS (file system), and move all file system articles accordingly (i.e. APFS (file system), NTFS (file system), FAT (file system). Vanishingly few sources use anything but the acronyms, which are the WP:COMMON terms. I know we generally prefer to "naturally disambiguate" by fully spelling things out, but the fully-spelt terms are incredibly obscure in most cases. I believe all the current titles are violations of WP:PRECISE's no more precise than [needed], and WP:NATURAL do not use obscure names, as well as three of the WP:CRITERIA: concision, naturalness (i.e. what would people look for?) and recognisability. DFlhb (talk) 15:32, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

W/r/t Hierarchical File System (IBM): that one would be moved to HFS (IBM file system), and Apple's would be at HFS (file system) for consistency with a moved HFS+ (file system), and because Apple's is the primary topic. DFlhb (talk) 15:51, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

(FYI, NTFS is already the name of the page for the corresponding file system; it's presumably not "NTFS (file system)" because of WP:COMMONNAME - and because there isn't an "NTFS (disambiguation)" page, so there's nothing to disambiguate from.

In addition, APFS redirects to Apple File System; perhaps those two should just be swapped, with no "APFS (file system)", and HFS+ already redirects to HFS Plus, so no need for "HFS+ (file system)".

A better example might either be moving HPFS to "HPFS (disambiguation)" and moving High Performance File System to "HPFS", or moving High Performance File System to "HPFS (file system)", depending on how common uses of "HPFS" to mean the file system and to mean other things are.

Also, you probably meant WP:COMMONNAME rather than WP:COMMON - I almost made the same mistake here.) Guy Harris (talk) 22:14, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I suspected that some would already be concise and non-disambiguated, but failed to check; that's on me. And I did mean COMMONNAME, thanks. I guess that leaves FAT and HFS for which my proposal would work as stated. I'd also support swapping APFS, as well as HFS+ (rather than "Plus"). DFlhb (talk) 22:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

HFS (file system) would be WP:Incomplete disambiguation (aka WP:PDAB) relative to HFS (IBM file system). Incomplete disambiguation is rarely a good idea. If the title is going to have some parenthetical term, it's ordinarily better to fully disambiguate it – e.g. as HFS (Apple file system). I might prefer the status quo over partial disambiguation. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Fair; fully disambiguating is fine by me too, since it still addresses my policy arguments above. DFlhb (talk) 23:57, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.