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File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

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all binary files should have a specification which mandates the use of a magic number

I agree, it's so much easier to open a file up in a hex editor, and then look up the first few bytes in a great big lookup table, which would never be out-of-date. What sort of idiot would want to quickly and easily establish the type of a file just by looking at the extension?

In case it had escaped you, that was irony. Binary file identifiers are good for machines, when it's machines reading and writing the files. Most of the time, though, it's humans using computers, and fleshbags have different requirements.

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