James Knott wrote:
Windows is the only OS that I know of that requires file extensions.
Linux and OS/2 don't. I don't know about Macs. So, perhaps the only
"strange" thing, is that Windows requires them. But another example,
where Windows is deficient.
First of all, the use of extensions goes back at least to the 1960s, on
time-sharing systems. Historically, both MacOS and OS/2 tried to use
metainformation instead. However, OS/2 applications tended to be
careless about creating and preserving metainformation -- especially GNU
applications -- and MacOS and OS/2 both had the problem that the
metainformation could not be transmitted across the Internet, unless the
file was put into an archive format (such as ZIP or Stuffit) with the
metainformation on the inside, so OS/2 generally used extensions in
practice, and MacOS X has been reworked to use extensions, too.
Even *ix often uses extensions. You can't very well use makefiles
without them, for example.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Sweet, was Christ crucified to create this chat?"
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
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