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I found a question that lists the (quote):

attributes are of a regular file (as opposed to a symbolic link, etc.) on Mac OS X with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (HFS+)

Does such a list exist for Windows/Linux? In other words:

What are all possible attributes a file can have for Windows 7 with NTFS (latest? 3.1?)

What are all possible attributes a file can have for Ubuntu Linux (latest) with ext4?

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NTFS files can have the following attributes:

  • archive
  • compressed
  • encrypted
  • hidden
  • not indexed (for content search)
  • offline
  • read only
  • system
  • temporary

You can view these on the command line in Windows using the attrib command.

File creation date and last modified date seem to be properties of the file, but attributes are more akin in NTFS to 'flags' setting the status of the file.

In Linux you can view file flags and extended attributes using lsattr. These are also visible on the man page for chflags: man chflags. These attributes are set by the system and not by the user and are:

  • archived
  • opaque
  • nodump
  • sappend (system append-only)
  • simmutable (system immutable)
  • uappend (user append-only)
  • uimmutable (user immutable)

OSX adds a futher attribute:

  • hidden

Additionally, files in both Windows and Linux (& OSX) can have extended attributes. In Linux, view these with the xattr command. These are typically custom key-value pairs, for example com.superuser.thread 632508

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