Okay, I'm not a totaly newbie, but I might as well be, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

So I'm trying to open a file, let's call it "file-name.0", because a friend of mine (running Windows) can't figure out how to open it, but, well, neither can I. About half an hour of Googling for the extension ".0" told me it's a sort of compression file, either an old Windows thing or for software called "hacha" (the website for which, hacha.org, is all in Spanish). So, dead end there.

When I looked at the file's properties Ubuntu tells me its type is "OLE2 compound document storage"--but doesn't that make it a Windows-specific file (meaning my Windows-running friend should be able to open it)? And if not, are there any programs I could use to look at it? I found <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~mschwartz/OLE-Storage-0.386/Storage.pm#EXAMPLES">OLE::Storage</a> but as I am, like I said, as good as a newbie I'm not really sure how to use that.

Thanks in advance for anyone with any idea what I'm talking about!

That link you have points to CPAN - the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network - and a Perl module; that module more than likely lends OLE document processing support to Perl.

Have you tried looking at the file in a pager or text editor? Try either, or both, of the following:
If you can read it - sweet. If not, then your friend is probably stuck.

I'm still really curious as to why someone's trying to open this odd file...

EDIT: Have you tried opening the document with OpenOffice?

You can also try running file on it to check if it is what you think it is:although I suspect that will just return "OLE2 compound document storage"...

Wow do I feel dumb now! I just assumed Open Office wouldn't work because he wwould've tried that before he asked me, but after your message I decided to try it anyway, just in case, and, well, um, it worked.

Palm, meet forehead.

As for why bother trying to open the file: He's a teacher, and the file is an exam e-mailed to him by a student (who evidently is under the impression that .0 file extensions are not weird?). Since grades are due, like, now, he asked me to look at it rather than ask the student to send it again.

Thanks for reminding me to try the obvious. (And not making me feel like an idiot for missing it the first time.)

Haha - you're very welcome.
PS. That student should be flogged for sending anything shy of a DOC or PDF. (PDF being preferred.)

As per indienick, the rule is that the teacher is in charge, so 99% of them specify the only doc/file type(s) acceptable and simply refuse to accept/mark anything else.
Its up to the student to comply (assuming he wants to pass ).