Tar command in mac os x adding “hidden” files, why? [closed]

Answer 1

As of bsdtar 3.0.3 - libarchive 3.0.3 (and perhaps earlier) there's a new (Mac OS X specific) option to the bsdtar command called --disable-copyfile to suppress the creation of ._ files.

Answer 2

You can add the following to your bashrc file -

export COPYFILE_DISABLE=true

Or, you can add this option to your tar command at the extraction time

tar -xzpvf x.tar --exclude="._*"

Answer 3

This is the way OSX stores the file system forks when the target file system does not support them.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)

Answer 4

It's a representation of the file's resource fork/extended attributes.

Try ls -l@ Test.txt and xattr -l Test.txt to see what extra stuff OSX tacked on to the file.