Open Radar

 
Summary:
Aliases created in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion take up huge amounts of space, sometimes even _more_ space than the item they refer to

Ok, maybe I'm old-fashioned. I haven't tested this on OS X Lion, but I just noticed something; Aliasses no longer seem to be just a 'reference' to the original item, but take up quite a bit of space!

I'm suspecting aliases now store their own copy of their icon, causing their size to be, well, big;

Some examples:
- New Folder: zero bytes
- alias to New Folder: 5.8 MB (!)
- System Preferences: 5.2 MB
- alias to System Preferences: 3.5 MB (that's 67% of the original)
- alias to Library: 6,1 MB
- empty text-document: 1 byte
- alias to empty text-document: 1.2 MB (!)

Some examples are shown in the screenshot attached

I always expected an alias to be a lightweight solution; I never expected an alias to actually take up more space than it's original
Is this 'by design'? To improve performance? (no longer required to look up the original icon)


Steps to Reproduce:
Create an alias of any item and inspect the alias to determine it's filesize

Expected Results:
Aliases to take up 'no' space, just be a reference to the original item

Actual Results:
Aliases take up a lot of space, sometimes even _more_ than the original item

Regression:

Notes: