Extended attributes (@) on Unix files permissions

If you use the terminal frequently probably you will see the @ attribute in your files; I didn't know what this attribute mean, but I did a research about this attribute that is common to see it on Unix systems like OS X.

The command man ls shows a little of information about the attribute:

If the file or directory has extended attributes, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by a '@' character.

-@      Display extended attribute keys and sizes in long (-l) output.

If you want to see only the files with extended attributes you can use this commands:

ls -l@ fichero
xattr -c fichero

To remove an extended attribute from a file we can use xattr -d like this:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo <NombreDelDirectorio>

To remove all the attributes from a file::

xattr -c <NombreDelDirectorio>

With this command you can delete all the file attributes from the current directory:

find . -iname '*' -exec xattr -c '{}' \;