Why do .jpg and .jpeg both exist?
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File extensions are suggestions to your computer operating system what kind of data is in the file so it knows what application to open with it. They have no special meaning besides this. As pointed out in other answers, older operating systems put hard limits on file name total length and only understood 3 character file extensions, so .jpg is the older extension format for JPEG images. They mean the same thing and if you were to change the extension to .picture then open it in Paint (or whatever your OS has) it would accomplish the same thing, since the extension is just a suggestion about what application cares about this file.
The part after the period used to tell the computer what kind of file it was and how to process it. The standard was three letters. Jpg stands for joint picture experts group, the organization that created the jpeg standard. The acronym jpeg didn’t fit that requirement so it was shortened to jpg. Modern operating systems use meta data within the file to know how to handle the file.
File extensions are suggestions to your computer operating system what kind of data is in the file so it knows what application to open with it. They have no special meaning besides this. As pointed out in other answers, older operating systems put hard limits on file name total length and only understood 3 character file extensions, so .jpg is the older extension format for JPEG images. They mean the same thing and if you were to change the extension to .picture then open it in Paint (or whatever your OS has) it would accomplish the same thing, since the extension is just a suggestion about what application cares about this file.
Older versions of windows, specifically DOS, were limited to having only 3-character file extensions. So to make things backwards compatible, .jpeg had to be shortened to .jpg. there is no actual difference beyond that, both file types are functionally the same. This is also why most file extensions are only 3 characters to begin with.
There are other file types this was done for as well, such as .htm instead of .html. But that’s not always the case. For example:
When microsoft office 2007 came out, they changed the format for office files from a proprietary binary format, to an xml based format. To distinguish these files from legacy office files, an ‘x’ was added to the file extension. So .doc became .docx, .xls became .xlsx, .ppt became .pptx, and so on. They also did this when asp.net (.aspx) was introduced to distinguish it from classic asp (.asp).
Since office 2007 and asp.net weren’t compatible with those older versions of windows anyways, there was no need to adhere to the 3 character rule.
Edit: small mistake, technically speaking, asp.net should theoretically be able to work on those older systems, since the asp.net part is actually run on a server and simply serves the resulting html content back to the user.
Older versions of windows, specifically DOS, were limited to having only 3-character file extensions. So to make things backwards compatible, .jpeg had to be shortened to .jpg. there is no actual difference beyond that, both file types are functionally the same. This is also why most file extensions are only 3 characters to begin with.
There are other file types this was done for as well, such as .htm instead of .html. But that’s not always the case. For example:
When microsoft office 2007 came out, they changed the format for office files from a proprietary binary format, to an xml based format. To distinguish these files from legacy office files, an ‘x’ was added to the file extension. So .doc became .docx, .xls became .xlsx, .ppt became .pptx, and so on. They also did this when asp.net (.aspx) was introduced to distinguish it from classic asp (.asp).
Since office 2007 and asp.net weren’t compatible with those older versions of windows anyways, there was no need to adhere to the 3 character rule.
Edit: small mistake, technically speaking, asp.net should theoretically be able to work on those older systems, since the asp.net part is actually run on a server and simply serves the resulting html content back to the user.
Older versions of windows, specifically DOS, were limited to having only 3-character file extensions. So to make things backwards compatible, .jpeg had to be shortened to .jpg. there is no actual difference beyond that, both file types are functionally the same. This is also why most file extensions are only 3 characters to begin with.
There are other file types this was done for as well, such as .htm instead of .html. But that’s not always the case. For example:
When microsoft office 2007 came out, they changed the format for office files from a proprietary binary format, to an xml based format. To distinguish these files from legacy office files, an ‘x’ was added to the file extension. So .doc became .docx, .xls became .xlsx, .ppt became .pptx, and so on. They also did this when asp.net (.aspx) was introduced to distinguish it from classic asp (.asp).
Since office 2007 and asp.net weren’t compatible with those older versions of windows anyways, there was no need to adhere to the 3 character rule.
Edit: small mistake, technically speaking, asp.net should theoretically be able to work on those older systems, since the asp.net part is actually run on a server and simply serves the resulting html content back to the user.
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