Hello, i’m trying to understand what a file format is, what it means, and what the sorrounding context is.
when people talk about a file format, are they really just referring to any type of file?
mp4 is a file format?
mp3 is a file format?
pdf is a file format?
txt is a file format?
doc is a file format?
is that what people are talking about when they say “file formats”? just different types of files that can or should be opened by different programs?
thank you
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File formats are just public instructions or standarts about how a file is structured. The names at the end are realy just names and can be changed.
A txt is mostly plain tex, that means the file is a long list of 8 bit values that represent letters.
A png file is a list of pixel values.
A word file(docx) is a zip like archive with other files in there.
So you can open a picture with a text editor(if you get around the warnings) and see gibberish, because the text editor tries to parse the puxel values as letters.
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