Any user of a computer system, one way or another, was faced with the concept of an executable file of a program. And not always (albeit very often) executable files have the .exe extension, common for Windows systems. To understand the issue of extensions, consider general information about such objects and some of their main types.
Differences between executable files and other objects
Before claiming that the executable file of the program has an extension of only one particular type, you should understand how to distinguish such an object from others.
In fact, among the main differences between executable files and other information data, several main ones are distinguished:
- the extension itself, indicating the contents in the file of either machine or byte code of the virtual machine;
- signature (content in the form of unique byte sequences);
- attributes in the file system (execute, etc.).
Unfortunately, even if you know that executable files have a name extension, for example, .exe, you won’t be able to browse the contents by conventional means, since such objects have compiled content, which when viewed is displayed as a meaningless character set. In the best case scenario, you will have to use Disassembler or something else that allows you to decompile. But now is not about that.
Executable structure
As for the construction of files of this type, as a rule, they contain headers (intended execution of instructions, parameters, code formats), the instructions themselves (machine, source or byte codes).
Sometimes the structure may include descriptions of the environment, data for debugging, OS requirements, lists of related libraries, images, sound, graphics, shortcut icons, etc. By the way, many probably paid attention that for the most part in each operating system such a file has an icon initially (provided that it should work in it from the start).
Principle of operation
Actually, despite the fact that executable files have a different type of extension, they work in a similar way.
When launched, the executable file is loaded into the computer's memory. In this case, the environment is initialized and set up, “pulling up” additional libraries, if the application is provided for by the program, setting up some additional operations and executing the instructions by the methods specified in the file.
What extension do the program executables have?
Now we come directly to the issue of extensions. It goes without saying that absolutely everything will fail (it will take too much time). On the other hand, the most popular and most common ones can be noted.
So, depending on the type of content, an extension is set. For example, on Windows, the most common executable files have the .exe extension. This applies to all programs designed to work in the environment of these operating systems. Such objects contain machine codes. Very similar (also with the content of such codes) are BIN files.
Another type of executable files are batch objects such as CMD, BAT, and COM, with the first type being a Windows batch file , and the second and third related to DOS systems.
Probably, many have encountered both MSI and MSU files. This can be either a “native” Windows installer or an installer of system updates.
In addition, scripts and macros (VB, VBS, VBE, SCR, JS, JSE) make up a separate category. There are often files like JAR and JAD, designed to install applications on mobile gadgets or use in a JAVA environment. All such objects in the content are no longer machine codes, but virtual machine codes.
What extension do executables on different systems have?
If you look carefully, you will notice that in some systems there are also quite specific components. For example, Windows has a special category of executable components (PS1 - PowerShell executable file, PIF - application information, WSF - script file, etc.).
In general, in any system you can find both standard and special components. However, there are some common formats (for example, HTA - an executable HTML document) that work everywhere and regardless of the operating system used.
As for other systems, for example, in “poppies” executable files have the extension APP if they are programs, and PKG if they are a distribution.
But with Linux-systems, the situation is somewhat different. The fact is that in them the concept of extension is absent as such. An executable file can be recognized only by its attributes (hidden, read-only, system, etc.). Thus, even the problem of changing the extensions to run or read the file you are looking away is no longer needed.
However, in any system or even in mobile gadgets you can find a huge number of objects of this type. No need to go far. In the same Android OS, the installer executable file has the extension APK, and on apple devices, these are IPA files.
Conclusion
Here is a brief summary of all executable file extensions. Of course, in this case, the emphasis was mainly on objects that are present in Windows-systems, and the rest were affected in passing and, so to speak, for general development. And, as it is already clear, the variety of objects of the executable type is so great that it is simply not possible to give some kind of pivot table indicating absolutely all extensions, therefore we limited ourselves to the most common formats.