Alias File Size - Why So Big?

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Aliases used to be small, but with recent versions of OS X it also copies a custom icon onto the alias.

 

icon?

I still don't understand why an alias of a 155k file would be 2.6megs as I have just observed on my mac OS 10.8.2. Why would the alias have bigger or more icons than the original file? It's a simple 4pg black and white pdf.

 

What if you make a symlink, is that large too?

 

Iirc, aliases often include info for the 'preview' function of the Finder, as well as the actual alias. This tends to make them bigger than the original file. You can strip that stuff out to get a reasonable size. However, it's a bit of work and there's no doubt the OS designers had a perfectly cromulent reason for doing things that way in the first place.

 

Can make them a bit smaller!

reply to an old post - but if you don't Google!

You can reduce the size by opening the finder information window and cutting the current icon. This will result in a file about 2/3rds of the size.

The size seems to depend on path length as well as preview information from what I can see.

The fact that they are so big and many times the block size on the disk is crazy and the antithesis of what they should be. A small file that linked to a file on a fileserver, or buried deep in a filing structure, but that was needed regularly was great, but 5.9MB for a folder without a custom icon is just daft.

 

How do you reduce the filesize?

I tried to make alias from Radium. Original apps is 20mb, alias is 4mb. Try to make soft link from command line it only take 24 bytes (4 kb in disk). What the different!