associating extensions with applications

David Fletcher fc at fletchersweb.net
Wed Jan 31 15:55:35 UTC 2007


On Wednesday 31 January 2007 15:36, Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> Does Linux, or more specifically the Gnome desktop, have a widget like
> the one in Windows that associates file extensions with applications so
> that, for example, when I double-click on a ".txt" file it opens in my
> favorite text editor?  Do file extensions have any significance in
> Linux?  Thanks for the help! -- Jerry

Linux is much more clever than that. So far as I know it takes no notice of 
file name extensions. It looks at the header information inside the file 
itself.

For instance, today I copied in an old file that was originally prepared using 
Word Perfect under windoze. Hovering over the file in konqueror the bar at 
the bottom tells me that it knows it is a Word Perfect file. Changing the 
file name extension from wpd to doc makes no difference - it still knows that 
this is a Word Perfect file. This one is a very simple file, but Open Office 
opens it just fine and displays all the text in it very nicely, thanks very 
much.

Dave

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