Hi, On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 7:52 AM, sunbeam...@juno.com <sunbeam...@juno.com> wrote: > > So how can I tell if a file is a PE file. Does it have a special > extension or file name?
No, the extension is .EXE, same as all others. DOS uses what is called MZ while OS/2 1.x and Win 3.x used NE. OS/2 2.x also used LX. (Open)Watcom often uses LE for its 32-bit DOS output. I'm under Linux right now, and a simple "file *.exe" for various things tells what most of them are. There's some hidden magic inside the binary. Though it's not entirely simple to identify as some of them (e.g. PE or LX) can optionally have a DOS stub (or optionally just say it can't run in DOS, which is better than nothing because literally no stub is possible but will crash). > Is there just one PE file for everything. No, but indeed 32-bit Windows has preferred PE since many many years (NT or Win95 or Win32s). Win64 uses PE+. > This could be why some software only works under windows. The PE file format is also used for UEFI, if I'm not mistaken. And even some DOS extenders have used PE in the past. But that won't run "natively" under Windows because it doesn't (normally) use Windows APIs. Long story short: a "Portable Executable" is what all modern Windows apps are contained inside. It's mostly Windows only. > Wikopedia was very good but left out some simple stuff that > it believes everyone should know I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
