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I just noticed a folder named .498731.padl in my home directory. What’s it for?

Here are its contents:

bplist00‘X$versionX$objectsY$archiverT$top�܆•U$null”   
WNS.keysZNS.objectsV$class°
Ä°ÄÄWPaddleT#A’j…˛M“Z$classnameX$classes\NSDictionary¢XNSObject_NSKeyedArchiver—TrootÄ#-27=CJR]dfhjlnvÑèò•®±√∆À����������������������������Õ
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  • The .padl extension seems to imply there is a connection to the LDAP tool called PADL, “PADL provides directory service integration software based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Our products are used by almost a million people worldwide, at universities, U.S. government agencies, financial institutions and in the aerospace industry.”
    – Giacomo1968
    Dec 2, 2015 at 17:02
  • If you're correct then I'm guessing Visual Studio Code is the culprit.
    – ammusk
    Dec 2, 2015 at 17:09

2 Answers 2

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15

It looks like it's a binary property list file. You might be able to open it using plutil -p .498731.padl if you're curious about the contents.

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  • This worked perfectly.
    – ammusk
    Dec 4, 2015 at 8:51
  • I have the exact same filename in my home directory. The contents displayed by plutil doesn't give much information on the origin of the file. It was last changed over a year ago. Any definitive information about its creator yet? Is Visual Studio the prime suspect?
    – rholmes
    Jan 22, 2019 at 14:53
  • I did find this info but I'm not on Windows and I've never used the indicated program. extension.nirsoft.net/padl
    – rholmes
    Jan 22, 2019 at 14:55
2

It's related to the Xee license feature, not required by the Mac OS. You can check its text contents by:

plutil -p ~/.489614.padl
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  • I can confirm that I have two .NNNNNN.padl files in my home directory and I once had the Xee picture viewer installed. The content of these binary plist files does not mention Xee at all. So I would have never guessed the origins of the file. Could I ask how you happen to know that Xee created them?
    – porg
    Oct 24, 2021 at 12:16

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