How can I unhide my files on MacBook Air after using the dot_clean command?

That command wouldn’t have hidden anything. You used it wrong for what you wanted to do, though. You told it to keep the metadata. dot_clean -m is what you needed.

To clear the hidden flag,

chflags -R nohidden <folder>

<folder> would be the path to the enclosing folder. If you just leave a space after the nohidden, you can drag the folder into the Terminal window to complete the path to the folder. Then hit return.

Is the folder on an external drive formatted in one of the FAT formats? I don’t know why it would be splitting off the resource fork otherwise. If it is, I don’t know if that format even has file flags and so that might not be why they are hidden.

ZenPanda wrote:

I thought I deleted everything somehow but when I press command and shift and . it shows all my files as grayed out.

Oh no. You definitely deleted everything.

In any event I went online and found advice on a command to stop my macbook writing these files

Don't believe advice you find on the internet. You'll wind up deleting all your files.

From what you describe, it sounds like this external drive was some kind of DOS-formatted FAT drive. That's why it would have those hidden metadata files in the first place. So, chances are, you can purchase a file recovery app and restore those files. You'll lose the original file names, but I guess you still have those somewhat. You'll just have to manually rename them all.

Good luck!

PS: Don't run Terminal commands from the Internet again.

ZenPanda wrote:

So it's weird I don't think the files are deleted as when I use the command and shift and . It unhides the files and shows up. The photos can even be viewed in preview window. But they are still grayed out. So just trying to unhide them.

The files are most definitely deleted. While the "find" command you posted above isn't correct, just must have run some functional version of it. When you added that "-delete" flag, it deleted those files.

What remains are the original metadata files. A FAT-formatted drive can't represent macOS metadata, so it create a a hidden dot file for each original file. That metadata file may include a low-resolution preview of the image. But the original is gone. You should be able to double-check this by the sizes of the files. Or try zooming in with Preview. If they get pixelated, then they are just low-res previews and the originals are gone.