20.2. How System Events Represents the Mac OS X File System

System Events' Disk-Folder-File Suite defines a somewhat different object model from the Finder's, although as it describes the same file system objects—files, folders, and disks—it mostly works in similar ways.

One reason you might want to use System Events to manipulate the file system is that some Mac users prefer to disable the Finder and use a third-party file manager such as Cocoatech's Path Finder instead. Clearly, this is a problem for scripts that rely on the Finder for manipulating the file system; fortunately, the System Events application is always available, so you can often use that instead.