BBedit and PanX application files

Not sure if this is supposed to work this way, or if means anything.
While looking for some files using BBedit 13.5 I notice that all of my Panx files had triangles before them, which if I clicked, dropped down and listed the application files (settings.plist,.data.plist, etc.) and .archives files. Tried it at home with Bbedit 9 and did not get the dropdown list, but when I clicked on the file, got data.plist and setting.plist in a view menu.

I have no idea if this is useful or dangerous, but thought I’d pass it along.

Panorama X databases are packages. They are basically folders that the operating system recognizes as packages. Each of the files in the packages contain a different part of your database.

There are several ways to see the contents of a package. You can right click or control click on its icon in the Finder, and choose “Show Package Contents.” You can use ls in Terminal to list its contents like any other folder. The AppleScript choose file command has a “showing package contents” boolean, which defaults to false, but will show the contents if you make it true.

Most text editors can open anything, whether it’s text or not, and try to interpret it as text. Trying to edit something that isn’t text, as if it were, is not recommended whatever the format.

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Dave’s explanation is spot on. I will only add that actually opening and modifying any of these files in BBEdit could damage the file, so I’ll go with dangerous.