Weird behavior noticed in iCloud Drive

[revmacian]

Findings
When I open Finder and follow the iCloud Drive link in the sidebar I land in the iCloud Drive folder.

I know of three ways to land in this folder:
* Open Finder and click the iCloud Drive link in the sidebar
* Open Finder and click through Home > Library > Mobile documents
* Open a Terminal and run the command: cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents

Using Finder
When viewing this folder in Finder I notice that there are 19 folders in iCloud Drive. Some of these folders are created by the system while the rest were created by me. These folders are present in the Files app on my iPhone XR and iPad Air 3, and also in Finder on my MacBook Air (2019).

Using Terminal
However, when viewing this folder via the Terminal in macOS I notice that there are 41 directories. Many of the directories I see in Terminal are related to apps that I have uninstalled long ago. I have noticed that the folders that were created by me are not listed, instead they are located in ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs. The Desktop and Documents items seem to be symlinks to the ~/Desktop and ~/Documents folders respectively.

The iCloud Drive folder in Finder seems to be a Smart Folder showing some folders from ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents and ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs

Deleting unused folders
When attempting to delete some of the folders which are related to uninstalled apps, I notice that those folders are restored. I also noticed that Finder repopulates and rebuilds the iCloud Drive folder. After noting the apparent behavior in Finder when deleting folders via Terminal, I halted my efforts as I didn't quite understand what was happening.

I noticed that some of the directories have a "@" symbol following the permissions: drwxr-xr-x@
and some do not: drwxr-xr-x

Questions
1. What is the meaning of the "@" symbol following the permissions on some of the directories listed in Terminal?

2. How do I delete the folders in iCloud Drive that are related to apps that I uninstalled long ago?

 

[chown33]

...
I noticed that some of the directories have a "@" symbol following the permissions: drwxr-xr-x@
and some do not: drwxr-xr-x

Questions
1. What is the meaning of the "@" symbol following the permissions on some of the directories listed in Terminal?
...

The @ means that the item (file or dir) has extended file attributes (xattrs). See the man page for 'ls'.

You can see a summary of the xattrs by using the -@ option to the 'ls' command:

ls -l@ ~

The 'xattr' command can provided details of any xattrs. It has a man page.


I have no info on your question #2.

 

[revmacian]

The @ means that the item (file or dir) has extended file attributes (xattrs). See the man page for 'ls'.

You can see a summary of the xattrs by using the -@ option to the 'ls' command:

ls -l@ ~

The 'xattr' command can provided details of any xattrs. It has a man page.


I have no info on your question #2.

Thank you very much for your reply! I spent 18 years on Linux and never knew about the "@" (xattrs) functionality. I love man pages, so thank you for your knowledge as well.

Edit:
Wowsers, the xattr -l command produces some nice info!