While poking around Parallels Desktop I found a script which is invoked by a setuid-root binary, which has the following snippet: local prl_dir="${usr_home}/Library/Parallels" if [ -e "$prl_dir" -a ! -d "$prl_dir" ]; then log warning "'${prl_dir}' is not a directory. Renaming it." mv -f "$prl_dir"{,~} continue fi Here ${usr_home} represents the home directory of the user for which Parallels Desktop is installed. The code says if ~/Library/Parallels exists and is not a directory then move it to ~/Library/Parallels~, presumably to back it up before creating this path as a directory.