Re: Windows executables, was Free x86 C compiler wanted

On 2007-04-13, kenney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <kenney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Also, I believe that at
least the later versions of DOS and most Windows will load EXE
files with a COM extension. That was done for FORMAT, for
example.

DOS decided what an executable format actually was by reading a header
in the program IIRC. The file designation COM, EXE etc. was only used to
decide what was executable and what was data. I don't know when it was
introduced but IIRC Windows 3.1 had a list of executable file types that
could be edited by the user.

Afaik Windows still has this in principle. However I don't know what
the recent SP2 changes did to this. The list describes which file
extensions are to be handled by the system (the core shell), and the
system itself decides

A lot of the worm activity was related to this list (that listed among
others .pif .scr .vbs and many more), because this way one could
circumvent Exchange/Outlook restrictions on .exe, since the kernel
would also execute the .scr, AND outlook wouldn't display known
extensions.
.

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