Resource fork
From REALbasicWiki
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On the Macintosh, each file is composed of a data fork and a resource fork, which are accessible independently. The latter is a structured piece of data which contains both system-wide and application-specific informations. Each piece of data is identified by its type (a four-char code), which usually corresponds to an abbreviation of the item name ('curs' for cursor, 'intl' for international...) and an 'ID' (a number). Alternatively, a name can be attributed to a resource.
In modern Mac OS X, resource forks are discouraged as they cause problems when transferring such files to other non-Mac-aware media, including Microsoft Windows and Linux systems. Instead, so-called plists are now the way to store preferences and other resources.
[edit] Accessing resource items in Resource Forks
On Mac OS, REALbasic allows access to resources through the ResourceFork class. This only works on resources stored in the resource fork, though.
To read (not write) resource data on any platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux), stored in either resource or data fork, you can use the [Resource file access] by Thomas Tempelmann.
