Date   : Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:28:50 +0200
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Spitting expletives

On 28/07/2010 02:01, J.G.Harston wrote:

> ".bbc" is tokenised BBC BASIC stored in Russell format

Err... So what's a BBC Micro executable?

Russell format? Don't you mean Wilson format? Or is the Windows 
interpreter using a different set of codes (in which case .bbc would be 
inappropriate).

.bbc is, however, a secondary definition, something else is known to use 
the .bbc file: http://filext.com/file-extension/BBC - this is why I tend 
to stay away from three-letter extensions, there just aren't enough 
unless you want weird things like, say, ".qm5"


 > ".bas" is *A* *TEXT* *FILE* containing

Tell that to VB prior to VB4, or the various DOS-ified "ProBasic" (etc) 
compilers. I've had to trawl Vetus just so I can open some of these files.


> A filetype should only be used to determine what should be done
> with a file in the absence of any other information

...which is sort of what I am doing, is it not?

Surely a type/extension is a great aid to what a file *is*. I mean, I 
have some PDFs, some MP3s, and some videos on my USB stick. If I can't 
remember, or it arrived with odd names like "90935095355,5935096" (ext 
omitted), should I just randomly click to try to find what I want? No, 
the type information helps categorise. And, as there's a difference 
between Acorn BASIC and Russell's BASIC (quite a large difference, once 
you get beyond the BASIC II keywords), it would be wrong to use the .bbc 
file definition, as it isn't that either...


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...