On Thu, 2002-04-04 at 17:15, Anthony V Guillen wrote: > Thanks to all who sent their response to my question. I have another question, I >think this is a ridiculous question, but I have nothing to do but to ask this >question just to know, I know that if we compile a program like an assembly program, >it will make another file excluding the source code, its either an .exe file or a >.com file, depending on the structure of the program, or in c programming, when we >compile a program, I know that it will make an exe file. If it so, why is it that >most of the files in Linux has no extension name, particularly no executable file >like in windows e.g. (scandisk.exe)? > > OK
Simple, really, file extensions are there for typing files, and there are other ways to do that in linux/UNIX. In particular, an _executable_ bit is available in file permissions... well actually three such bits, one for owner, one for members of owner's group, and one for the rest of the universe. Open a terminal window. cd /usr/bin ls l* and you will see a list of files. Those shown in green with an asterisk following their name are executable. Executable files are NOT NECESSARILY files which have been compiled to dynamically linked (like exe) or statically linked (like com) files... .bat files are included as well, and something like this will be on the first line #!/bin/sh for shell programs #!/usr/bin/perl for perl programs #!/usr/bin/env python for python programs--all of those call script interpreters and then run the script in the file. Xtart is an example of a python program, located at /usr/bin/Xtart which executes fast enough that it is unlikely ever to be recoded into C. For a real treat, look at man bash The shell which executes batch files can do stunningly powerful things... Look also at /etc/rc.sysinit for examples of the sort of analysis programmable. printerdrake is an example of an extremely powerful perl program Civileme
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