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Arguably, NTFS implemented alternate data streams primarily to support Mac resource forks.


Nope. It was originally done as part of OS/2 (Windows NT was sort of OS/3 - the next version of OS/2) and OS/2 had "extended attributes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes#OS.2F... - so NT also needed them for compatibility.


Thank you! All these Mac people think Apple Invented Everything.


The resource forks of the Macintosh File System date back to 1984, significantly antedating OS/2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_File_System


To be fair, resource forks have been around since HFS first came out. I doubt Apple invented this concept, but they definitely predate MS on this front.


Dave Cutler's team writing NT came from VMS which has multi-version files which are pretty much the same as multi-fork files.


Not the same thing at all. On VMS, when you opened a file, made changes and saved them, you automatically got a new version. You could open any version using the colon syntax, but it's not the same thing at all as resource forks.




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