But .txt is not the same as .rs; yet .txt is not the same as .docx, although both of these files look the same to the human eye.
This is the kind of shit you’d read in a textbook from the 70s
The two types are text (encoded) and data (bytes)
Not just those. Files are just a method of storing digital data, so it’s not just those four. You can have files storing databases, software (think exe, AppImage, deb, rpm, etc.), design files, projects, and more!
And file extensions are a method of telling different programs how to handle different files, since the data is formatted a bit differently. For instance, a “.txt” file is stored in plain text, while an executable file is compiled code that needs to be run.
For your example, I would like to note that you are comparing a plain text file type to a rich text file type. Plain text file types, like .txt, .md (Markdown), and the different code files (like .json, .py, .rs, etc.), can be viewed and edited with a simple Notepad-style text editor. The data is stored, as the name suggests, in plain text. In comparison, rich text file types, like .odt and .docx, encode additional data like fonts, styles, images, animations, etc., and require a rich text processor (like LibreOffice, MS Office, etc.) to read them. You can’t view them through a notepad-style application, for example.
And for images, video, and audio, you have it take into account compression, codecs, that sort of thing. You might have heard that a PNG can store transparent images and is a lossless format while a JPEG cannot and is a lossy format. “Lossless” means that, after compression, no data has been removed (or “lost”), while “lossy” means that some data is removed after compression. For audio, MP3s are lossy while WAV files are lossless. You might have also heard of “raw” photos and “raw” videos, those mean that the data is directly from the camera in its original quality.
For most file types, you can’t just change the extension to convert them, as the data stored is arranged differently! This is why renaming a .txt file into a .odt will not be a valid rich text document, for example.
Oh, and you also have files like .zip or .tar(.gz), which are used to store a compressed version of some amount of digital files. And they can different in compression techniques, how data is arranged, etc.
What about .exe / .dmg Files for installing programs?
Nope. Wrong. There are thousands of file types, and while a handful of them fall somehow under your four categories, most of them actually don’t.
And calling .docx a “text file” is an insult to all honest text files.
There is only text files.
I find it so incredibke u can record random audio rn and its turned sound into stone as text that 1000 monkeys could eventually type up by random like Shakespeare
There are thousands of types of file. They all contain data as a long sequence of numbers, and how those numbers are interpreted depends on the type of file - text characters, floating point numbers, pixel colour information or compressed data
images are pixel colour information while audio and video are compressed data ?
Depends on the file format. There is compressed and uncompressed audio - some times the numbers just represent the audio waveform (e.g. .wav) - some times with lossy lossless compression. Most, but not all, video formats are compressed due to the data size
I learned in computing that there are two: binary and text. If you open the file with a text editor and you can read some stuff, it’s text. If just random characters, it’s binary.
All files are binary. Text is just one interpretation.
There is structured text and formatted text.
There are index files.
There are databases.
There are mixed media files.
There are combined databases with mixed media and indexes, a.k.a. NOSQL databases.
t.b.c.
Executable files.
A database is a file ?
Well, unless it is an in-memory database (which isn’t too common), it needs to be stored on disk at some point. And for storing things on disk, you use one or more files.
Depends on the database system. But that’s often the case.
Yes, of course. Even if it claims to be on a harddisk without a file system - which makes it the only file there :)
Someone will probably correct me – but the funny thing is that stuff like docx and xls are just a zipped/tarballed collection of different kinds of files. So I would add whatever the official term for “zipped/tarballed” to your list.
“Archive” is probably the word you’re looking for.
Don’t understand this.
Try renaming a docx file extension to zip. Then open the file, you’ll see that there are other files (mostly XML) inside. The docx is a container.
Compressed files. Files that contain other files in a form that takes less space but needs more processing to access
If they look the same, you’re either using the wrong editor or the wrong font.
If you have a .docx file, rename it to .zip, and extract it. You’ll see the .docx is just packaged text (and image) files.
the would not look the same if you read them raw; much of a docx file is formatting and other metadata
DocX is a weird beastie, last time I researched the topic it ended up being like an XML database with a word document mask
Not really.
For practical purposes, all files “binary”, ones and zeros. And with those ones and zeros, you can encode stuff for example text and for example with ascii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII But you can also encode programs that can be executed, or what you named, visual, audio, or whatever you want. The differences are the “encodings”.
Sometimes, things work a bit like one of those Russian Matryoshka dolls, for example a PDF can contain a JPG or a PNG but also TXT.
It’s really not that simple as there being “4” types.
I’m not sure that answers your question though.
