WhatFormat

It's not always possible to see from a filename's extension what actual format is used. Sometimes the same extension is used for different formats, one extension can be used for different versions or often a file simply has a wrong extension.

The first bytes of a file may contain information of what format is used. WhatFormat is a file analyser that looks at these bytes for signatures (magic numbers) and makes a guess of the format this file may have.

WhatFormat is also easy to use and it requires only 50 kb of space.

Here are some usefull things that you can do with WhatFormat: ￭ It can be seen as a little util that may help you if you received a file from the Internet or wherever and you don't know what it is. By looking at magic numbers in the first bytes and at the filename extension, WhatFormat may tell something about this file. New in version 1.4 is that it also suggests some possible viewers or converters. ￭ If WhatFormat recognizes the header of a file it often suggests some extensions this file may have. If you have problems opening this file with an application that should know this format, you can rename it with one of the other suggested extensions and try it again. I've tried to put the most commonly used extensions at the front. Of course it's (mostly) not a very smart idea to rename binaries (e.g. com, exe, bin, dll, vbx, etc.). ￭ Check if the 'header' description matches the 'extension' description. If it doesn't, this may explain why this file won't open in your favourite app. In such a case mostly the 'header' description is right, so renaming this file to a right extension would be the right thing to do. ￭ Check version numbers (if shown). E.g. if WhatFormat shows the 'Version needed' for a ZIP file as '2.xx' and the version of Pkunzip you use is '1.xx', there's a very good change it can't be extracted. In that case you should update Pkunzip. ￭ It may be interesing to use WhatFormat to try to examine these *.bak files or these *.chk or *._dd files made by respectively Chkdsk and Norton Disk Doctor.

Requirements:

￭ At least a 486 PC. ￭ msvbvm50.dll in your windowssystem directory.br>