CODEWITHSUNDEEP
eclipsegithububuntu-18.04git-clonebndtools
bhutto
bhutto

Reputation: 1

Is there any way, a software can access hidden files in Ubuntu, without renaming files?

I am trying to clone openEMS repository and import it in Eclipse's Bndtools for development on Ubuntu 18.04.

Since Ubuntu considers files with names starting with a period(.), hidden, I can not get the ".project" file accessed by Eclipse and the import fails. The error message I get is:

Could not finish import job for Bnd Workspace! The project description file (.project) for 'cnf' is missing. This file contains important information about the project. The project will not function properly until this file is restored. The project description file (.project) for 'cnf' is missing. This file contains important information about the project. The project will not function properly until this file is restored.

So, is there any way, a software can access hidden files in Ubuntu? OR in anyway those files can be made visible without changing their names?

Thanks in anticipation!

PS: I have tried "ls -a", "Ctrl+H" etc. but unfortunately none of these make the file accessible by any other software (Eclipse particularly).

Upvotes: 0

Views: 142

Answers (1)

datenwolf
datenwolf

Reputation: 162317

There's nothing special about dotfiles. You can access dotfiles by usual means just fine. Try this in a shell

~/ % echo "Hello" > /tmp/.hello.txt
~/ % cat /tmp/.hello.txt
Hello

You see, no problem. The fact that dotfiles are "hidden" is a legacy artifact from the early beginnings of Unix: When the ls tool was written, the authors wanted it to omit the special directory entries . (= current directory) and .. (= parent directory), and they did this by simply checking of the name starts with a .; that's all that there is to "hiding" a file in Linux.

What more likely is, that you did improperly clone the Git repository or somehow else dropped the dotfiles. Use ls -a in the project directory to see all the files, and check, that .project, and the other dotfiles are actually there.

Upvotes: 0

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