From: rjh@cpax.org.uk   
      
   On 09/12/2025 08:03, David Brown wrote:   
      
      
      
   > But surely on Windows you can just look at the file extension -   
   > if it is ".txt", it's a text file, otherwise it's a binary file.   
      
   It is now almost a decade since I last made (approximately   
   weekly) use of a Windows system. For the 25 years prior to that I   
   used a variety of extensions for text filenames, including:   
      
   txt - generic textfile   
   doc - documentation*   
   c   - C source   
   cpp - C++ source   
   h   - C or C++ header   
   tex - LaTeX source   
   ly  - Lilypond source   
   eml - email backup   
   cfg - configuration files   
   ini - initialisation files   
        - Makefiles and READMEs   
   sh  - shell script   
   asm - assembly language source   
   i   - C preprocessor output   
   bin - binary (contains only '0', '1', and '\n') - I found less   
   than a dozen of these, but there they were.   
      
   These are, of course, all also binary files. Whether a file that   
   contains only printable characters is text or binary is really a   
   matter of perspective more than anything else.   
      
   --   
   Richard Heathfield   
   Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk   
   "Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999   
   Sig line 4 vacant - apply within   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)