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Ghost files in my machine !!! File system question...

Asked by Austin Texas

The title here is a joke. This is neither urgent nor very important. But it does have me baffled. Maybe someone can solve the mystery.
When I enter the location file:///home/dan/Personal/ into Firefox or Google Chrome, I get a listing of the files in ~/Personal, as you would expect.
Both Firefox and Chrome showed a file called .directory , created in 2009, in my Personal folder.
I had never noticed this file before, so I opened up caja and looked at /Personal and the file was not listed. ! ?
So I created a file named .directory2 with pluma, and saved that to my ~/Documents.
Caja displayed that file.
So I copied .directory2 into ~/Personal, and it did NOT show up in caja, even tho Chrome and Firefox could see it.
So why does caja show .directory2 in ~/Documents, but doesn't show the same file in ~/Personal ? Any ideas?
The .directory files do show up if I ls -a in a terminal.

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Austin Texas
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Is it the same if you log off and on (just to test)?

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Austin Texas (linuxmint18) said : 		#2

I have to add a note:
The .directory files in ~/Personal do show up in Nautilus, but not in Caja.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Yes, thats because it' hidden. Hidden folders in Unix and Linux are prefixed with a period. You have lots of them in your home folder. If you run this command you will see what I mean:

cd $HOME; clear; pwd; echo; ls; sleep 5; echo; echo; echo; pwd; echo; ls -a

See how the first lot are the folders but the second lot are the hidden folders (-a tells ls to show all files).

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Austin Texas (linuxmint18) said : 		#4

OOPS !
I discovered the answer to my question.
Caja displays the .desktop files at the end of the file listing. I was looking for them at the top, or in alphabetical order.
They are there, I just didn't see them.
As my dad would say, "If it ain't working, there is probably a screw loose in the Operator."

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Austin Texas (linuxmint18) said : 		#5

I would mark this as "Solved", but the solution is comment #4, and there is no 'This Solved My Problem' button on comment #4.
Apparently the designer of the site believes that the person who posed the question will never provide the solution.
I think he is wrong, and I think that bug should be fixed.
Overall, it is a very slick site, tho.