Overview
A file format (ファイル形式, fairu keishiki / ファイルフォーマット, fairu fōmatto) is a format for storing various types of information used on a computer. There are various file formats for different purposes.
This would not be a problem if the computer handled only text files, but as computers began to handle a variety of file formats, it became necessary to identify the file format. For this purpose, the file name extension, a few Latin letters added to the end of the file name, is used. In the past, CP/M and MS-DOS had a three-character limit, so file names often had two or three characters, but nowadays file extensions of four or more characters are sometimes used.
macOS embedded "creator" and "file type" information in each file to identify the file format type; OSX uses a "property list" to identify files, but also supports file extensions.
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