They’re Base-64 encoded data which is related to the Finder Alias. Here’s how to resolve them in an app, at the command line, and in code.
links
The third successive macOS upgrade brings fundamental changes which could so easily have resulted in catastrophe. How did Apple pull it off?
New version should address long delays in checking old Finder Alias files.
How can you check all your old Finder Aliases to see which are broken and, more importantly, which are in danger of breaking?
Coming up to its 12th birthday, Time Machine backups have changed a great deal, but still rely on a feature almost unique to HFS+. What is their future?
Why measuring free and used disk space is not so simple in APFS, and which estimates you should trust.
Hard links can’t be readily distinguished by macOS or the Finder, and can lead to strange anomalies, as they’re seen as additional files, not links.
So resolving an Alias doesn’t always update data in the Alias file, even though it returns the correct path when possible. This is becoming a mess.
Links – hard links, symlinks, and Finder Aliases – are the most complex and confusing of simple concepts in computing. Do they get any better after research?
It’s all too easy to change the information in a Finder Alias when you’re inspecting it. Here’s how to avoid that, and a new version of Precize to help.
The Eclectic Light Company 