Fat_IRL t1_ixts9e2 wrote
Whatever application you're using to open the file in question knows how to display the file in question.
File extensions don't actually matter, they're for humans, not computers. More or less.
Most every file of any type has a piece of info at the beginning that tells your computer how it would like be opened and what type of file it is. Basically a hidden 'real' file extension. But you can open a .jpg in a text editor any time you want. Your computer assumes that's not what you really want to do, so it generally doesn't give you that option without you forcing it to.
If you wanna go deeper, it's all numbers and letters and the extension does not matter at all. Like almost every computer game you play, the file that saves your progress is very often just a .zip file renamed.
JaggedMetalOs t1_ixtza8l wrote
> File extensions don't actually matter, they're for humans, not computers. More or less.
Well, I wouldn't say that. They are used (in Windows) to decide what icon to use and what program to open it with when you double click.
Technically Windows could look inside every file to decide this, but that would be much slower when listing files in a folder.
Also while most applications will check the contents of a file while opening it, some assume a format based on the file extension (eg. LibreOffice will always open .csv as a text csv file, even if the file is actually an xls/ods)
Fat_IRL t1_ixu5fba wrote
Yeah you right with all of that, especially the last, I was kinda being generic with my response.
It just kinda freaks me out when I'm on my Linux laptop and it'll save my file 'fartbutt' as a file with no extension at allunless I tell it to, and it's still valid.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments