What Kinds of Files Are There?
There are many kinds of files. Text files, music files, videos, and various word processor and presentation documents are common. Text files only contain characters; all the other file formats include formatting information that is specific to that particular file format, and in order to use a file in a particular format you need a special program that understands that format.
Try opening a Microsoft Powerpoint (.pptx) file in a text editor such as Apple TextEdit, Microsoft Notepad, or one of the many Linux text editors such as vi, emacs, and gedit. Scroll through it; you’ll see what looks like gobbledygook. This is because those files contain a lot of information: what’s a title, what are the headings, which ...
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