Install MacPerl on Freebsd

[Aaron Siegel]

Hello

I am try to write a script that will rename Macintosh files to windows file
name format. I do not have access to a Macintosh computer. Can MacPerl,
Mac::Files, and Mac::MoreFiles run on a FreeBSD system?

Thank you
Aaron

[Chris Nandor]

No, unless you count Mac OS X, which is largely based on FreeBSD.

What functionality from those modules do you need?

--
Chris Nandor pu...@pobox.com http://pudge.net/
Open Source Technology Group pu...@ostg.com http://ostg.com/

[Aaron Siegel]

I would like the ability to extract the creator and file type from the file so
I can automate the renaming of Macintosh filenames to Windows filenames.
MacPerl::GetFileInfo

[Chris Nandor]

At 15:43 -0700 2005.01.27, Aaron Siegel wrote:
>I would like the ability to extract the creator and file type from the file so
>I can automate the renaming of Macintosh filenames to Windows filenames.
>MacPerl::GetFileInfo

Once that file is on a non-Mac system, that information no longer exists,
in most cases, as it is stored in a special metadata file on the system,
and when you copy that file to a non-Mac system, it is left behind.

[Bart Lateur]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 15:43:36 -0700, Aaron Siegel wrote:

>I would like the ability to extract the creator and file type from the file so
>I can automate the renaming of Macintosh filenames to Windows filenames.
>MacPerl::GetFileInfo

If you have access to some Mac, you could convert the files to
MacBinary, extension .bin. That makes it a flat file, and creator/file
type are part of the header. There are some ancient, Mac Classic,
conversion utilities floating around.

Or, you could go frisky and go take a peek to what's in the hidden
".AppleDouble" subfolder, if that's indeed what your file system uses.

--
Bart.

[Joel Rees]

> I am try to write a script that will rename Macintosh files to windows
> file
> name format. I do not have access to a Macintosh computer. Can
> MacPerl,
> Mac::Files, and Mac::MoreFiles run on a FreeBSD system?

If it's just a matter of naming, you don't need Mac::Files and the like.

But I would guess what you want to do is actually use the file type
info that would be available in the Mac HFS file system to determine
the file extensions? There used to be packages available for that sort
of thing, but I'm not sure if you can still find them. They never
worked perfectly, as I recall. But it wouldn't be perl, it would be
*nix. The utilities for installing netBSD or openBSD on the old Macs
came with some utilities for moving only one fork into a BSD partition,
but those are not scriptable by any means.

Hard to say what to suggest without more information. Old Macs with
built-in ethernet and scsi are often really cheap on ebay, for
instance. Likely to be easier to run the MacBSD on a Mac and have it
ship things up the wire or save things onto a MS-DOS SCSI volume, or,
if the files aren't big, onto an MS-DOS floppy.

--
Joel Rees
even though much of what I do is not sensible
it does make sense if you know why ...