OT: Mac OS X have a "registry"?

[Alex Rice]

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 02:50  PM, Rob Gould wrote:

> Can anyone tell me if Mac OS X has a "registry", like Windows?  I
> basically need a place to store an encrypted password, and I need
> someplace to store it where people would be unlikely to find it.
> Putting it in the preferences folder would be too obvious.  My
> PC-buddies were telling me that the registry might be a good option, 
> but
> I don't recall reading anywhere that Mac OS X has such a thing.
>
> This password just needs to be stored, and then the user reboots their
> Mac, and then in the startup folder will exist a .rev app that reads 
> the
> password and acts upon it, and then deletes it, so it doesn't need to
> hang around after that point.

I think there is no direct equivalent to the Windows registry. OS X has 
two similar things though: NetInfo and the Defaults System. NetInfo is 
for administrative and setup info. Defaults is for application and user 
defaults and preferences.

Defaults are put into the user's Preferences folder unless another 
Defaults domain is specified- then I think you can put defaults into 
the System folder or other places.

But if you are encrypting the password what does it matter if it's put 
in an obvious place like the Preferences folder?

You could alternatively put it into ~/Library/Application Support or 
into a Unix dot file (hidden file) like ~/.robsSecretPasswd


Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | 
<http://mindlube.com>

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco