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It is all metadata, mostly things such as custom icons, the application that created the file etc. It is safe to delete.
– dreamlax
Commented Oct 27, 2009 at 1:53
Still, if you primarily use Mac I would recommend keeping it. If you use Windows more than OS X, then go ahead and kill it.
– dbmikus
Commented Oct 27, 2009 at 2:02
(@dreamlax) It is true that much of the data stored in the extended attributes is metadata that it might be safe to delete, but that is not always the case. In particular, when files with “resource forks” are stored on something that is not HFS derived (FAT, UFS, tar, etc.) these ‘._*’ files are used to hold the data from (among other extended attributes) the resource forks. While many file formats are moving away from using resource forks (towards bundles), there are some files where critical data is stored in the resource fork (sometimes the resource data is the only data).
– Chris Johnsen
Commented Oct 27, 2009 at 4:04

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