move/cut grayed out

[jate]

Hi All,
I've had a PowerBookG4 for almost 2years now(my first MAC) and am currently running 10.3.7. A little annoyance I've had that has finally prompted me to post is this:

As my Admin login or as root I am unable to use the cut/move option in Finder, it's always grayed out. I can use the terminal and mv all I want but it would be handy to "x" and "v". I've run fix perms and put in the util disk and scanned/fixed HDD.
All the files I've tried to move are always owned by my current login.
There are only two users in the system, myself as admin and root. I feel like I'm missing something simple here but don't know what, any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
jate

[hayne]

You aren't missing anything. All is working as designed.
The issue is that (unlike in MS Windows) you can't use Cut and Paste to move files in Finder. This is an explicit design decision by Apple. I presume that it was decided that cut & paste of files doesn't match the usual metaphor since with the usual "Cut" operation (e.g. on some text in a document), once you do the "Cut", the text is gone from its original position and only exists in the clipboard. I think on MS Windows, the "Cut" is only a pending operation -it doesn't actually do anything until you do the Paste.

You might wonder why there is a "Cut" menu item in Finder's Edit menu if it is never available. The reason is that it is sometimes available - if the selected thing is some text - e.g. if you have clicked once on the name of a file as if to rename it, then the text (name) of the file is selected and you can use Cut to remove it preparatory to typing in a new name.

Anyway, the only way to move files in Finder is to drag & drop them.

By the way, here's another thread discussing this issue:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=161269