TextEdit bug with com.apple.quarantine extended attribute

I was having fun and games with the "This file has been downloaded from the Internet" message appearing even for files that I had created myself. I've finally been irked enough to track it down to a bug in TextEdit.

In Lion 10.7.4 open a Terminal shell. Then do:

$ cd ~/Documents
$ echo "fred" > test.txt
$ xattr test.txt

There is no output as no extended attributes are set. Now double-click test.txt in the Finder to open it using TextEdit and enter a few characters (e.g. add "bloggs" to the second line). No need to save. Go back to the console:

$ xattr test.txt
com.apple.TextEncoding
com.apple.quarantine

Oops!

Go back to TextEdit, save the changes and com.apple.quarantine is gone (but TextEncoding remains as it (probably) should do.)

Go back again to TextEdit, type a few more characters and Quit (so that 'versions' retains a copy), and com.apple.quarantine is back.

Mostly this is an invisible problem however some of my AppleScript droplets complain with the message "This file has been downloaded from the Internet... etc"

--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey
England
(bruce at scorecrow dot com)
.

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