programming: A part of an application where the programming instructions specific to that application are stored. The resource fork is composed of separate resource packages, like volumes in an encyclopedia. A document can also have a resource fork, if it really wants one.
The portion of a Macintosh file that contains information about the file, such as the application used to create the file (which lets you autolaunch a file by double-clicking its icon). In addition, the resource fork includes information about the type of icon that should be displayed for the file, and so on. DOS, OS/2, and Unix files don't have resource forks. See also Data fork.
One fork of a Macintosh file. The Perforce file type is resource.
Every file on a Macintosh computer is really two files -- the file containing the data and another hidden file, called the resource fork, that contains information about which application created the file. This is how a Macintosh knows to automatically open the appropriate application when you click on a file's icon. When you transfer Macintosh files to UNIX machines, the resource fork sometimes shows up with the file name preceded by ``%''. When you transfer the other way, you must sometimes create the resource fork file using a standard Mac utility like ResEdit or BunchTyper.
The part of a Macintosh HFS file containing the Macintosh resources, such as information defining the file type.
Some files on the Macintosh store their information in two different "forks," a data fork and a resource fork. The resource fork contains special Macintosh information that may need to be preserved for the file to work on another Macintosh after being transferred. The data fork usually contains the main body of the file's information, such as the text or graphic data that make up a HTML or JPEG file. See the upload formats help topic for a discussion of forks and how they relate to transferring files.
A file on the Macintosh consists of two parts, called forks. The "data fork" contains the data which would normally be stored in the file on other operating systems. The "resource fork" contains a collection of arbitrary attribute/value pairs, including program segments, icon bitmaps , and parametric values. Yet more information regarding Macintosh files is stored by the Finder in a hidden file, called the "Desktop Database".
a portion of a Macintosh program file which contains assets that can easily be replaced or modifed with ResEdit, without editing the data fork. Windows files do not have resource forks. The size of a Macintosh file when viewed on a Windows machine reflects only the size of the data fork, and will not reflect the size of the resource fork. Therefore, Macintosh files, such as XObjects, that contain no data in their data forks, will appear to have zero size when viewed under Windows.
One of two forks of a Macintosh file. It can contain code resources or noncode resources, or it can be empty. 68K-based runtime applications store their code in the resource fork See also: data fork
The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and application code (machine code). For example, a word processing file might store its text in the data fork, while storing any embedded images in the same file's resource fork.