What do file extensions (exe, pdf, etc) actually do?
In: Technology
They let the relevant reader know what kind of file it is. For a computer this might matter when “using” the file.
Let us say you want to display the file on a screen. You command the computer to open file *Dancing Dog.* How does a computer know what to do with the file if it doesn’t know what it is? Is it a text file that is a story? A video? A picture? The file extension is like a label that says “this one is a video.” Since the computer knows it is a video it will open the video player to display the file. If you use the wrong file extension by renaming the file to have a text document extension, it will try to open it on a text viewer. A text viewer probably is not designed to display video, so you’ll get an error of some sort.
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