Bit Save Arrays

[Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (David A. Moon)]

    Date: 10 Feb 90 03:41:04 GMT
    From: bbn.com!mesard@BBN.COM (Wayne Mesard)

    I have a MacIvory model II.  On the Macintosh file system there's a
    folder called "System Folder:Ivory:Bit Save Arrays".  It contains 32
    files named "BitSave m.n", where m and n are integers.  Some of the
    files are empty, but some are as large as 115k.  The modification dates
    on the files range from 10/24/89 to 12/14/89.

    What are these guys?  They account for 1.7M on my hard disk.  Can I
    delete them?  Pretty please?

These files contain saved images of windows that did not fit in Macintosh
memory and hence got swapped out to disk.  This is alluded to in the
documentation section "Off-Screen Bitmaps" but it doesn't mention the
name of the folder.

It is safe to delete any of these files.  If the system is still using
one, it will recover from the absence of the file by clearing the
saved image of the window in question.  In any case it is safe to delete
any of these files that are older than the last time you booted the Ivory,
since they are no longer in use.

The system normally deletes these files when you quit the Genera icon
(the program that runs on the Macintosh).  If the Macintosh crashes
instead of shutting down normally, the files can get left around.  The
software makes some effort to delete them later, but it doesn't always
get all of them, because of its conservative way of only deleting files
that it can be sure are not still in use.