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files extensions

hey guy i have a quick question

i have files i need to open to view the content.

file extension a pretty funky..lol

is there an apps that could open all kinds of files?

the extension are

.bat

.bif

.dat

.so

They are probably binary format... .so files always are (or symlinks to binaries), unless someone is playing silly games. Thus, there is really nothing to see, but if you insist on viewing the contents, you can open them with any text editor, such as vi or nano.

file will tell you if they are binary or not:

Code:

root@turin [~]# file /usr/lib/libcurses.so

/usr/lib/libcurses.so: symbolic link to libncurses.so.5.3

root@turin [~]# file /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5.3

/usr/lib/libncurses.so.5.3: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

root@turin [~]#

.bat = shell script
.bif = I can't find it because some jerk band named themselves after it
.dat = Appears to only be used in Simcity4. Must be for saving logs/records or something.
.so = appears to be a shared-object DLL or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dat

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorophose

.dat = Appears to only be used in Simcity4. Must be for saving logs/records or something.

Actually, .dat is a pretty generic file extension used by a whole lot of programs. It generally denotes a some form of data file, but is not an actual format of any type. I've seen it used for data files in a number of games, old DOS applications, and even the Windows registry files, e.g. ntuser.dat.

As for .bif, that seems to be pretty generic as well.

This is probably a good point to note that file extensions are not inherently meaningful. They're just conventions - anyone can choose any extension they want for any kind of file they want, and they often do. In the case of common extensions, like .dat, there is no anser to the question of what program can open it because, without more information, there's no way to know what the file contains.