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1991-12-16
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1KB
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30 lines
I've made a few mistakes in my day and thought you might
appreciate a bit of insight about a February Star-Dot-Star
item ["A Is for Action"] that commits a mistake in the
interest of caution. Your editor's note warns readers never
to rename a COM file extension to EXE or vice versa,
intimating some foul result.
Actually, from DOS's point of view, it makes no difference
whether an executable file's extension is COM or EXE. To see
what kind of program it is dealing with, DOS looks not at
the extension, but at the first few bytes of the program
file. Having a file with the correct EXE or COM extension is
merely for human convenience.
D. J. R. Dilworth
Carmel, California
Editor's note: It's true, and the mistake is ours. Changing
a program file's extension from COM to EXE or vice versa
will not confuse DOS. It may, however, confuse any
technically minded person working on your system. As we
stated in February, however, some programs work properly
only with the original file names.
Title: An Executable's Extension
Category: DOS
Issue date: Jun 1991
Editor: Karl Koessel
Supplementary files: NONE