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Bear with me, as the Firefox cache has gotten more byzantine over the years so is the question. I am using Firefox 35.0.1 on Mavericks. I want to mess around with the cache. There is a lot of outdated or incorrect information on this topic in the search results from Google.

I want to CLEAR the browser cache, then do something on the web and see what falls into the cache. To that end I thought I'd find the thing, clear the cache from the menu and then do my experiment. Yes, I know I can sort by date and get my latest browser cruft to the top of the list, but a side issue is that the cache doesn't really clear and I need to understand that too.

About:cache tells me the cache is at: /Users/<me>/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/<something>.default/cache2 but About:config has no entry for parent_directory as some help articles claim.

Anyway that location is a lie to begin with, because it actually contains two directories, doomed and entries: doomed contains a bunch of files, and they all have numbers for names, and entries contains a bunch of files with really long names (if I had to bet I'd bet on entries).

OK, now, when I "clear the cache" from preferences there are still a couple hundred files in entries and doomed. They mostly have recent dates. So "clearing the cache" is another lie.

I kind of prefer not to go off the rails and rm files willy-nilly when I really don't know what they are. So could someone explain in excruciating detail this cache structure, including what files the system is hanging on to and why (when I told it to clear the cache), and what is doomed vs. entries?

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  • What interests me is not so much what files are in the browser cache as how much space is taken by all the files in the browser cache together. Because if the whole browser cache is relatively small, why not leave it alone?
    – karel
    Feb 8, 2015 at 14:11
  • You can find that out with about:cache (I guess you can't attach illustration). I have my reasons for wanting to CLEAR the cache, whether it is big or small. And I would like to know why "clear"-ing it using Firefox's inband tool does not actually clear it. So if someone knows please spew. Thanks! Feb 9, 2015 at 19:46

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