How does computer understand whether some file is text, video, image. As it only understands binary at the end of the day ?

Question

I tried going through various articles and videos available online, but couldn’t really understand, properly!!

In: 0

Answer 1

Every file has a format. That format is what tells the program that opens it what it is meant to be.

But you are absolutely correct, at the end of the day it’s just binary. A format is a suggestion. You can absolutely open a video file in, say, a hex editor.

Some of those internet “hacker puzzles” rely on opening, say, an audio file as an image, or a video as text. But that usually means the audio or video is jumbled or broken if play in their “natural” players, because the contents of those files do not follow the intended structure that format actually uses in legit files.