List of file formats
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This is a list of file formats organized by type, seen on computers. Filename extensions are usually noted in parenthesis if they differ from the format name or abbreviation.
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Sound & music
Lossless audio
- Uncompressed
- Compressed
- FLAC (free lossless codec of the Ogg project)
- Lossless Audio (.la)
- LPAC (.pac)
- Apple Lossless (M4A)
- Monkey's Audio (APE)
- OptimFROG (http://losslessaudiocompression.com/) (.ofr)
- RKAU (http://rksoft.virtualave.net/rkau.html) (.rka)
- Shorten (SHN)
- TTA free lossless audio codec (True Audio)
- WavPack (.wv)
- Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless (WMA)
Lossy audio
- MP2 (MPEG Layer 2)
- MP3 (MPEG Layer 3)
- Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
- Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
- GSM (GSM Full Rate, originally developed for use in mobile phones)
- Windows Media Audio (.WMA)
- AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .m4p, .aac) - Advanced Audio Coding (usually in an MPEG4 container)
- MPC - Musepack
- VQF - Yamaha TwinVQ
- Real Audio (RA, RM)
- SWA - Macromedia_Shockwave Audio (Same compression as MP3 with additional header information specific to Macromedia Director - see What is the difference between MP3 and SWA files? (http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14680))
Other music formats
- MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
- NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
- MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
- S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
- XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
- IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
- MT2 (MadTracker 2 module. It could be resumed as being XM and IT combined with more features like track effects and automation.)
- MNG (BGM for the Creatures game series, starting from Creatures 2; a free editor and player (http://mngedit.sourceforge.net/) is available)
- STF StudioFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.
- SYN SynFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.
- NIFF
- MusicXML
Computer Aided Design
- DXF, or ASCII Drawing Interchange file format
- GERBER, or Gerber file
- EXCELLON, or Excellon file
- IGES
- Intergraph's Intergraph Standard File Formats
- Softimage's dotXSI
Electronic Design Automation
- GDSII
- OASIS, Open Artwork System Interchange Standard
- OpenAccess
- SPICE netlist format (see SPICE, netlist)
- LEF/DEF
Document
These files store formatted text.
- ASCII, Unicode (.txt, .utx (for Unicode))
- Amigaguide
- AWW - Ability Write
- CWK - ClarisWorks / AppleWorks document
- HTML (.html, .htm) and XHTML (.xhtml, .xht, .xml)
- LWP - Lotus Word Pro
- Radix-64
- RTF - Rich Text Format
- SXW - StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Word Processor format
- TeX (.tex)
- Texinfo (.info)
- Troff
- DOC - Microsoft Word
- OpenOffice (employs XML) (http://xml.openoffice.org )
- WPD - WordPerfect
- WPS - Microsoft Works
- WRF - ThinkFree Write
- WRI - Microsoft Write
- PAGES - Apple Pages Presentation
Spreadsheet
- 123 - Lotus 1-2-3
- AWS - Ability Spreadsheet
- CLF - ThinkFree Calc
- CSV - Comma Separated Values
- gnumeric - Linux gnumeric spreadsheet, gziped XML file
- QPW - Quattro
- SXC - StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet
- TAB - tab delimited columns; also TSV (tab separated values)
- XLS - Microsoft Excel worksheets
- WK? - Lotus 1-2-3
- WKS - Microsoft Works
Database
- DBF - DBase III/IV
- MDB - Microsoft Database (Access)
- NSF - Lotus Notes database
- NTF - Lotus Notes database design template
- SQL - bundled SQL queries
- WDB - Microsoft Works Database
- FP? - Filemaker
Presentation
- PPS - Microsoft PowerPoint Show
- PPT - Microsoft PowerPoint
- PRZ - Lotus Freelance Graphics
- SHF - ThinkFree Show
- KEY - Apple Keynote Presentation
Webpage
- Static
- Dynamically generated
- ASP (.asp) - Microsoft Active Server Page
- ASPX (.aspx) - Microsoft Active Server Page.NET
- ADP - AOLserver Dynamic Page
- CFM (.cfm) - ColdFusion
- CGI (.cgi)
- Perl (.pl)
- PHP (.php, .php?, .phtml) - ? is version number
- SSI (.shtml) - HTML with Server Side Includes
Script
- HTML Applications (.hta)
- ICI (.ici)
- JavaScript (.js)
- PHP (.php, .php?) - ? is version number
- Perl (.pl)
- Python (.py)
- Ruby (.rb)
- Shell script (.sh)
- Tcl (.tcl)
- Visual Basic Script (.vbs)
Graphics
- Main article: graphics file formats.
Raster graphics
These files store images as a group of pixels.
- ART - America Online proprietary format.
- BMP
- CUT - Dr. Halo image file
- DjVu - DjVu for scanned documents
- GIF - CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format
- MNG - Multiple Network Graphics, the animated version of PNG.
- MSP - a file format used by old versions of Microsoft Paint. Replaced with BMP in Microsoft Windows 3.0.
- IFF (.iff, .ilbm, .lbm) - ILBM
- JNG - a single-frame MNG using JPEG compression and possibly an alpha channel.
- JPEG, JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) - a lossy image format widely used to display photographic images.
- JP2 - JPEG2000
- LBM - Deluxe Paint image file
- MAX - ScanSoft PaperPort document
- MIFF - ImageMagick's native file format
- NITF - A US Government standard commonly used in Intelligence systems
- PBM - Portable BitMap
- PCX - an lossless format used by ZSoft's PC Paint, popular at one time on DOS systems.
- PGM - Portable Graymap
- PICT - Apple Macintosh PICT image
- PNG - Portable Network Graphic (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
- PPM - Portable Pixmap
- PSD - Adobe Photoshop Drawing
- PSP - Jasc Paint Shop Pro image
- QFX - QuickLink Fax image
- RLE - a run-length encoded image.
- SGI - Silicon Graphics image
- TGA - Truevision Targa image file
- TIFF (.tif or .tiff) Tagged Image File Format (usually lossless, but many variants exist, including lossy ones.)
- XBM - X Window System Bitmap
- XPM - X Window System Pixmap
Vector graphics
Vector graphics use geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images.
- AWG - Ability Draw
- AI - Adobe Illustrator Document
- CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
- CMX - Corel Draw vector image
- DXF - ASCII Drawing Interchange file format, used in AutoCAD
- SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics, employs XML
- Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
Signal data formats (non-audio)
- ACQ (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg/#ACQ) - AcqKnowledge File Format for Windows/PC from Biopac
- BKR (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg/bkr.html) - The EEG data format developed at the University of Technology Graz
- BDF (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg/#BDF) - BioSemo data format - similar to EDF but 24bit
- CFWB (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg/#ADICHT) - Chart Data File Format from ADInstruments
- EDF (http://www.hsr.nl/edf/) - European data format
- FEF - File Exchange Format for Vital signs
- GDF - General data formats for biomedical signals
- MFER - Medical waveform Format Encoding Rules
- SCP-ECG - Standard Communication Protocol for Computer assisted electrocardiography
- SIGIF (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/%7Eschloegl/matlab/eeg/#SIGIF)- SIGnal Interchange Format
- and many others [1] (http://www.dpmi.tugraz.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg)
Object code
- a.out classic UNIX object format, now often superseded by ELF
- COM files, used in DOS
- ELF
- MZ EXE (.exe; used in DOS)
- XPI (which is a PKZIP archive that can be run by Mozilla browsers to install software) (.xpi)
- Mach-O (Mach based systems, notably native format of Mac OS X)
- PE (.EXE, .DLL ; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
- PEF (Mac OS versions 9 and under; compatible with Mac OS X via the Classic emulator)
- ZXE - Executable that is generated by the Z++ compiler.
Function Library
- DLL - Microsoft Dynamic Link Libraries
- .so - Shared object (Unix/Linux)
- .dylib - Macintosh Dynamic Library
- .tlb - Windows Type Library
Object Extensions
Page description language
- DVI
- PCL
- PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)
Scientific data formats (Data Exchange)
- CDF Common data format [2] (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cdf/cdf_home.html)
- FITS Flexible Image Transport format - Standard data format for astronomy [3] (http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/)
- NetCDF Network common data format [4] (http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/netcdf/docs.html)
- HDF Hirarchical Data Format [5] (http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/)
- SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)
Tabulated data
- tab
- Comma-separated values (CSV)
- dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)
Archive and compressed
- 7z
- ace
- arj
- bzip2 (.bz2)
- cab - Microsoft Cabinet
- deb
- gzip (.gz)
- jar
- LHA (.lzh)
- lzo
- lzx
- Parchive (.par, .par2)
- RAR
- sit - Stuffit (Macintosh)
- tar
- .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
- zoo
- zip
Video
- Main article: video file formats.
- AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
- Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
- ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
- AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
- Macromedia Flash (.swf for viewing, .fla for producing) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
- Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a container format, which enables any video format such as MPEG-4 or XviD to be used along with other content such as subtitles and detailed meta information)
- MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
- MPEG
- MXF
- Tarkin (Ogg project, all Tarkin files are Ogg files)
- Theora (Ogg project, all Theora files are Ogg files)
- OGM (OGM is a container format created so that Ogg Vorbis could be used for the audio of a video as this could not be done with AVI)
- MOV (QuickTime, a container format, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common)
- RealMedia
- XviD
Geographic Information System
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
- World TIFF (Geographically located raster data)
- GeoTIFF (Geographically located raster data)
Video Game ROMs
- Nintendo Entertainment System (.nes)
- Super NES (.snes)
- Gameboy (.gb) (this applies to the origional Game Boy and the Game Boy Color)
- Gameboy Advance (.gba)
External link
- Listings of common filename extensions: [6] (http://www.filext.com) (includes MIME types), [7] (http://www.cryer.co.uk/filetypes), [8] (http://whatis.techtarget.com/fileFormatA/), [9] (http://www.dpmi.tu-graz.ac.at/~schloegl/matlab/eeg/) (scientific computing-related)
- Dot What? (http://www.dotwhat.net/) Information on file extensions and the programs that use them.
- Wotsit's (http://www.wotsit.org/) collection of file format references for programmersde:Liste der Dateiformate
fr:Liste d'extensions de fichiers nl:Lijst van bestandsextensies ru:Список форматов файлов fi:Luettelo tiedostoptteist zh:文件格式列表