Open dot-file with dialogue in OSX

Question

Since the GUI-side of OSX treats all dot-files (such as .htaccess) as hidden, it doesn't display them in any of the graphical UI:s, e.g. Finder or the Open-dialogues.

How can I open a dot-file (.htaccess in this case) in a graphical editor, without doing that thing for all hidden files, universally and without going through Terminal.app?

Edit: I'm on Leopard, if that makes a difference.

Edit2: TextWrangler and TextMate seem to have features that allow you to open hidden files, which partly answers my question.

Answer 1

If you only want to do this for one specific file, you can create a symbolic link to the dot-file. Open up Terminal.app, cd to the directory containing your dot-file, and run

ln -s .htaccess dot_htaccess

Then you should be able to double-click the file dot_htaccess as a regular file, and any edits you make will really go into .htaccess.

Answer 2

TextMate (a really nice text editor for OS X) open dialog has a "Show hidden files" option, and TextWrangler (and its big brother BBEdit) has it has a menu item.

Answer 3

You could tell Finder to display hidden files as well (enter in Terminal):

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

But that’s not really nice since there are a lot more hidden files. So I recommend to use an editor that allows you to view those in the open dialog like Chuck mentioned.

Answer 4

In the command line, for a file named FILE, type:

open -e FILE

The open command will open the file in TextEdit (-e flag). Check out "man open" for more flags (e.g., specify the app to open with -a)

Answer 5

Smultron (another nice OS X editor mentioned in the comment above and similar to TextMate, but free) has an "Open Hidden..." file menu item that works splendidly for this purpose.

Sad news: Smultron is apparently no longer being developed further beyond v3.5.1 (which requires Leopard), according to a post from its author at its homepage: http://tuppis.com/smultron/

jEdit is another free option that has hidden file support: www.jedit.org/users-guide/vfs-browser.html (sorry for the lack of 'http' in the link -- being a new user, my posts are limited to just one link. Alas...)

Answer 6

In an "Open File" dialog you can use Command-Shift-. to see dot files.