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There is a lot of talk about how to exclude, ignore, or delete .DS_Store files on macs. It seems these small files contain data about folders that is used by Finder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store https://wiki.mozilla.org/DS_Store_File_Format
Has this information ever been put to use by a third party program?
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DS_Store files are only used by the Finder to hold custom view settings for that particular folder. In most cases nothing will happen if you delete them, or at worst custom Finder view settings (icon size, position, background color, etc) will be lost.
No data is lost by deleting the corrupted files as Mac Finder only creates . DS_Store files to store viewing options, such as the positions of icons, size of the Finder window, and window backgrounds. To delete a corrupted . DS_Store file, you will need to use Terminal.
DS_Store is a file that stores custom attributes of its containing folder, such as folder view options, icon positions, and other visual information. The name is an abbreviation of Desktop Services Store, reflecting its purpose.
What is this? ds_store lets you examine and modify . DS_Store files from Python code; since it is written in pure Python, it is portable and will run on any platform, not just Mac OS X.
Most of the information in those files is accessible through apple events sent to the Finder, and using the apple events is documented. It is things like icon positions, labels and window sizes.
There are applications that will arrange your icons for you. I wrote a screen switcher before Spaces that also switched the icons on your Desktop. It had to indirectly access the .DS_Store to get and set icon positions.
Another related third party use is several applications hide registration and expiration data in ".DS_Store " files.
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