Re: Who actually started adding the .exe extension to Amiga programs?

category: offtopic [glöplog]

I've wondered the same. I think it's maybe users wanting to mark the executables same way as with Dos.

Linux wasn't a popular thing when Amiga was still relevant for larger audience, so maybe people were not used to permission bits like nowadays. I mean people of course used Unixes in universities etc. but it was not popular at homes. But it's just my theory, would be great to hear other takes on this.

And sorry, I've been using too much Slack. In Slack you can start forum threads directly from oneliners. It's pretty cool.

added on the 2026-02-21 12:51:56 by hot multimedia

Maybe one could decrunch all archives in scene.org and find the earliest use of .exe ? Not sure how to find out the earliest use. For me it was always to make it easy to see which one in this jumple of files is the one that runs the demo. Sometimes you'd get tripped and there would a script with some assigns and other stuff that you should have run instead though.

added on the 2026-02-21 19:54:43 by rloaderro

Hey hot multimedia. Thanks for picking the topic up here. You‘re probably right. Let‘s see if we find out here.

added on the 2026-02-21 20:38:49 by Depeche

wasnt it also a thing on AMIGAAA to put the extension in front of the filename?

added on the 2026-02-21 22:02:33 by wysiwtf

mod.obviously

added on the 2026-02-22 08:07:13 by farfar

Lots of modules were named mod.*.*

added on the 2026-02-22 08:08:33 by mayday

But I think it was merely a convention, OS didn't specify anything about them

added on the 2026-02-22 09:19:55 by hot multimedia

While we're at it... who invented the ".xex" extension on Atari? And is it pronounced "zex" as my mind-voice renders it?

added on the 2026-02-22 13:36:04 by Krill

I always pronounce it the only good way the letter X can be

"ksehks". I will never agree for X being pronounced as "zee"... Also it's "zed-ecks", not "zee-ecks" for you spectrumers ;p
Anyway, I think it was invented for Altirra?

added on the 2026-02-22 13:47:31 by OlaHime

I pronounce "Xanadu" as "zanadu", so it'd be silly to pronounce the X any other way, at the start of a word or name.

I always hated the "mod.*" way of naming Amiga music modules, it was always a pain having to rename the file to put the .mod at the end, and programs that relied on filename extensions like TypeStats would be f'ed up by them, too.

As for MS-DOS-like filename extensions, I'm glad I use them now. They are a lot easier to determine what the file type actually is, and is not reliant on icons like AmigaDOS to determine what the file actually contains. Yes, I know the filetype information is stored in a header inside the file itself, but that's not much use when viewing the files in DOpus or something.

added on the 2026-02-22 19:59:51 by Foebane72

Wouldn't .hunk be more suitable for Amiga's executable files? Also .CMD would be less associated to Microslop (and more associated to CP/M ...even though also Windows uses it for batch files).

added on the 2026-02-22 20:13:52 by la_mettrie

I vote for .runme

added on the 2026-02-22 20:23:09 by Emod

.runmebabyonmoretime

added on the 2026-02-22 21:17:07 by Krill

Would be super interesting to draw a function of time graph on how many releases there are every year that have an .exe on the .adf. Wish I had time for everything. Also sounds like an icky crawling job to get the data.

added on the 2026-02-22 21:41:48 by hot multimedia

Quote:

Also sounds like an icky crawling job to get the data.

1. Get the prods metadata from data.pouet.net
2. Get the actual data by rsyncing from pouet-mirror.sesse.net
3. You now have the data

added on the 2026-02-22 21:47:21 by Sesse

I've collected over a thousand Amiga demos from the early days of the platform, all three chipsets and from 68000-68060, and I can filter them by their use of ".exe" as a search parameter. Give me a day, and I'll have link lists you can browse through at your leisure posted here. As I've just checked, there are hundreds.

added on the 2026-02-23 10:10:19 by Foebane72

Hmmm... Amegas (1987) had amegas.exe as the a filename.

Cursory scanning of TOSEC for "1986" and "1987" disks is giving me:

Code:

Commodore Amiga - Collections - Panorama/Panorama - Disk 08B (1986-08-13)(Pacific North-West Amigas Club)[WB].adf - sectormap/SecMap.exe
Commodore Amiga - Games - Public Domain - [ADF]/Wheel of Fortune (1986-12-20)(Wiguna, Hari)(SW)[h New Age][AmigaBASIC].adf - Enable/M002.exe (and many more)
Commodore Amiga - Collections - Fred Fish/Amiga Library Disk #0084 (1987)(Fred Fish)(PD)[WB].adf - AudioTools/EXECUTABLE.FILES/audio.LatC.exe
Commodore Amiga - Collections - Fred Fish/Amiga Library Disk #0084 (1987)(Fred Fish)(PD)[WB].adf - AudioTools/EXECUTABLE.FILES/audio.AmiC.exe
Commodore Amiga - Collections - Fred Fish/Amiga Library Disk #0084 (1987)(Fred Fish)(PD)[WB].adf - AudioTools/EXECUTABLE.FILES/audio.ManxC.exe
Commodore Amiga - Demos - Various - [ADF]/2nd Demo (1987)(Risky Business Boys).adf - Intro.exe
Commodore Amiga - Educational - [ADF]/Speller Bee v1.1 (1987)(First Byte)[h Avitrox].adf - avintro.exe
Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF]/Amegas (1987)(Pandora)[t Lord Blitter].adf - amegas.exe
Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF]/Arkanoid v1.00 (1987-11-30)(Discovery)(US)[cr SF][f PAL SF - AGA NOMAD][a].adf - Arkanoid.exe
Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF]/Kikstart II (1987)(Mastertronic)[cr BS1 - TKT].adf - C/MDRFIX.exe
Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF]/Ninja Mission (1987)(Mastertronic)[f AGA Misery][h Misery].adf - msy-nin.exe

added on the 2026-02-23 16:14:53 by losso

added on the 2026-02-23 17:32:19 by Foebane72

pouët.net

Re: Who actually started adding the .exe extension to Amiga programs?

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