File Formats

From iA wiki

See also: File Format | Audio Formats | Data | Information

This list is nowhere near exhaustive. Not even close. We're not even going to try. Seriously. No, seriously!

Some other helpful references include:

• Fileinfo.net - Searchable database of file extensions.
• File Extensions Reference - File extensions listed alphabetically.
• Wotsit Format - Contains file format information on hundreds of different file types.

Contents 1 List of wiki topics which speak about a file format: 1.1 Graphics Formats: 1.2 Audio Formats: 1.3 Text Formats: 1.4 Office Formats: 1.5 Internet Formats: 1.6 Compression/Archival Formats: 1.7 Source code Formats: 1.8 Executable Formats: 1.9 Multimedia 1.10 File Authentication 1.11 Unsorted

List of wiki topics which speak about a file format:

Graphics Formats:

• GIF - Compressed graphics files - best for icons and low-color drawings
• JPEG or JPG - Compressed graphics files - best for photos
• PNG - Compressed graphics files - Free successor to GIF not patent encumbered, not compatible with really browsers, this now a moot point, everyone had to upgrade for security reasons
• TIFF or TIF - Tagged Image File Format
• PSD - Adobe Photoshop images
• BMP - Uncompressed bitmap images files
• XCF - The GIMP image files
• ICO - Windows icon files
• SVG - Uses XML to describe vector graphics

Audio Formats:

• WAV - Sampled wave forms - Windows format
• AIFF - Sampled wave forms - Sun Microsystems and Apple format
• OGG - Ogg Media (usually Ogg Vorbis compressed audio format)
• MP3 - Compressed Audio format
• WMA, WMV - Microsoft's compressed Audio and Video format
• AAC - Dolby's Compressed Audio format
• SHN, Shorten file format for lossless audio compression
• RA, RM, RAM - Real Media stand-alone and streaming audio and video formats

Text Formats:

• RTF - Rich Text File format
• TXT - Plain text (usually)

Office Formats:

• PDF - Adobe Portable Document Format
• DOC - Microsoft Word documents
• PPT - Microsoft Power Point presentations
• XLS - Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
• WPD - Corel Word Perfect documents
• SDW, SXW - Old Open Office and StarOffice documents, since version 2.0 they now use the OpenDocument format
• ODT - OpenDocument text documents
• ODS - OpenDocument spreadsheets
• ODP - OpenDocument presentations
• ODG - OpenDocument graphics
• ODB - OpenDocument database

Internet Formats:

• HTM/HTML - HyperText Markup Language
• PHP - HyperText Pre-Processing (a deliberately weird acronymn)
• ASP - Windows Active Server Pages
• JSP - Java Server Pages
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
• VRML - Virtual Reality Markup Language
• CGI - Generic web-based scripts
• JS - JavaScript

Compression/Archival Formats:

• ZIP - PKWare archives
• RAR - RAR archives
• ARJ - ARJ archives
• TAR - UNIX tape archives, uncompressed. Usually they are they compressed leading to .tar.Z or .tar.gz or nowadays .tar.bz2 extensions
• 7Z - 7zip archives
• BZ2 - bzip2 compressed files
• GZ - gzip compressed files
• Z - UNIX compressed files
• CAB - Windows install archives
• ACE - ACE archives
• LZH - LZH archives
• LHA - LHA archives

Source code Formats:

• C - C source code
• H - C header file
• CPP - C++ source code, although there are not really standard file extension for C++ and some use .C (notice the uppercase or .cxx
• JAVA - Java source code
• BAS - BASIC source code
• PAS - Pascal source code

Executable Formats:

• EXE - Generic MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows executables
• SCR - Windows screen savers
• COM - MS-DOS conventional/low memory executables
• BAT - MS-DOS shell scripts or batch files
• CMD - Windows NT shell scripts
• SH - Bourne or Korn shell scripts for UNIX
• PL - Perl scripts

Multimedia

• RIFF

File Authentication

• MD5, SHA1, RSA, DSA

Unsorted

• INF - Windows driver information files
• O - UNIX compiled object files
• OBJ - Windows compiled object files
• CLASS - Java compiled object files
• JAR - Packed Java compiled objects