[Coco] Re: File extensions

[Roger Taylor]

At 09:23 PM 10/18/2004, you wrote:
>If MS didn't insist in the stupidity of identifying file types by 
>extension (particularly considering that most modern, non-MS file format 
>contain easy to recognize magic numbers you could name the file whatever 
>you wanted and still identify the file type.  Incarnations of AmigaDOS 
>from 3.0 onward had no problem with this.  Unix systems using both CLI and 
>GUI interfaces have never depended much on file extensions to tell the 
>user what type a file was either.


I think extensions are necessary because people are the ones doing the most 
looking and identifying.  Software can use the extension just like an 
internal magic number, but people cannot immediately see inside of a file 
to examine the contents, let alone a "magic" number (usually 4- to 
8-character acronyms).


--
Roger Taylor