TextEdit data loss concerns

The first poster is wrong. File and folders are not equal in UNIX/linux. There are different system calls and semantics for each. Directories cannot be accidently removed when the expected destination is a file. The open call will fail with EISDIR (Is a directory). This is a GUI problem.

Note that Cocoa save dialogs will present a warning panel that says:

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"directory" already exists. Do you want to replace it?

A file or folder with the same name already exists in daryn. Replacing it will overwrite its current contents.

Cancel Replace
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The user is given fair warning, but most users will never even accidently see this panel. Consider how many files are saved with no extension. Very few. This is a contrived example of a non-problem.

Not so much "data security" as it is "data integrity."

actually all UNIXes work like that, files and folders are equal, same thing with linux. it's not a flaw, it's like that by design. i remember this one time when i tried to copy paste a C header file to another directory and i just slapped it in a directory with the rest of the header files. or so i thought, turned out i had overwritten the folder, lol.