hfs - shell for manipulating HFS volumes

hfs [hfs-path [partition-no]]

hfs is an interactive command-oriented tool for manipulating HFS volumes. hfs is based on the Tcl interpreter, so basic Tcl constructs can be used in addition to the following commands:

mount path [partition-no]

The specified UNIX path is opened as an HFS volume. If a partition number n is specified and the volume source is located on a partitioned medium, the nth discovered HFS partition will be mounted. The default partition-no is 1.

umount [path]

The volume previously mounted from the specified path (or the current volume, if none specified) is unmounted.

vol path

The volume previously mounted from the specified path is made current.

info

General information about the currently mounted volume is displayed. This information is also displayed automatically when the volume is mounted.

pwd

The full path to the current working HFS directory is displayed.

cd [hfs-path]

The current working directory is changed to the given HFS path. If no path is given, the working directory is changed to the root of the volume.

dir [hfs-path]

A directory listing of the specified HFS directory is displayed. If no path is given, the contents of the current working directory are shown.

mkdir hfs-path

A new, empty directory is created with the specified path.

rmdir hfs-path

The specified directory is removed. It must be empty.

create hfs-path [type [creator]]

An empty file is created with the specified path. The Macintosh type and creator may be specified, or they will default to TEXT and UNIX, respectively.

del hfs-path

Both forks of the specified file are deleted.

stat hfs-path

Status information about the specified HFS path-identified entity is displayed.

cat hfs-path

The data fork of the specified HFS file is displayed.

copyin unix-path [hfs-path [mode]]

The specified UNIX file is copied to the named HFS destination path. Unless specified otherwise, the file will be copied into the current HFS working directory using a heuristically chosen mode. The mode may be one of: macb (MacBinary II), binh (BinHex), text, or raw.

copyout hfs-path [unix-path [mode]]

The specified HFS file is copied into the named UNIX destination path. Unless specified otherwise, the file will be copied into the current UNIX working directory using a heuristically chosen mode. The modes are the same as for copyin.

format path [partition-no [volume-name]]

The specified UNIX path is initialized as an empty HFS volume with the given name, and this volume is subsequently mounted. The default volume name is Untitled.

The shell is scriptable, however it should be understood that the above commands are actually implemented by Tcl procedures prefixed with the character "h", e.g. hmount, hcd, etc., in order to avoid name collisions with other Tcl utilities. The "h" may be omitted in interactive use for convenience.

hfsutils(1), xhfs(1)

cat can only display the data fork of a file. Text translations are performed unconditionally on the output. Furthermore, binary data cannot be handled properly from within Tcl scripts since the character with value 0 cannot be represented in Tcl strings. Use copyout to copy files without these limitations.

Robert Leslie <rob@mars.org>