OS X: What does the ‘@’ attribute on a file mean

mac-osxunix

On a Snow Leopard machine, at the Terminal: 

la ~/src/rmcl/ | grep RMCL
-rw-r--r--@  1 claytonstanley  staff  6766167 Nov 13  2009 RMCL

What is that '@' attribute?

This file is part of an older OS X program that runs under Rosetta. I'm having issues where some older programs running under Rosetta require the @ attribute when opening files. But I'm not sure what that attribute is, so I have no way to know how to add/remove it.

I did try a thorough Google search on this, but I wasn't able to find the answer. I would have thought this would be an easy one to find. Maybe the Google query isn't acting properly because of the single @ special character.

Any info. is much appreciated.

Thanks!

Best Answer

It's for extended attributes.

Try ls -la@e to display them. You can use normal chmod to set them (check out man chmod).

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