Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Aliases

Highlighting an icon and then choosing File → Make Alias (or pressing

-L), generates an alias, a specially branded duplicate of the original icon (see Figure 2-16, top). Since it’s not a duplicate of the file—just of the icon—it therefore requires negligible storage space. When you double-click the alias, the original file opens. Even if you rename the alias, rename the original file, move the alias (even to a different drive), or move the original (on the same drive only), double-clicking the alias still opens the original icon.

Because you can create as many aliases as you want of a single file, aliases let you, in effect, stash that file in many different folder locations simultaneously.

Aliases by Dragging

The only problem with creating an alias by using the Make Alias command is that you wind up with the word alias on the end of the file name. If you want the thing to look halfway decent, you’re now committed to the tedious task of backspacing over that little suffix. You can also create an alias by Control-clicking a normal icon and choosing Make Alias from the shortcut menu that appears, but once again, the word alias appears on the resulting alias.

Fortunately, you can avoid the whole issue by creating an alias by Option-

-dragging the original icon out of its window. Aliases ...