On Windows, what filename extensions denote an executable?

Posted by Ken on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Ken
Published on 2011-01-03T19:34:55Z Indexed on 2011/01/03 22:56 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 278

On Windows, *.exe, *.bat, *.cmd, and *.com all represent programs or shell scripts that can be run, simply by double-clicking them. Are there any other filename extensions that indicate a file is executable?

EDIT: When I jump into a new project (or back into an old project!), one of the common things I want to do when looking around is to find out what tools there are. On Unix (which I've used for decades), there's an execute bit, so this is as simple as:

find . -executable -type f

I figured that on Windows, which seems to have a much more complex mechanism for "is this executable (and how do I execute it)", there would be a relatively small number of file name extensions which would serve roughly the same purpose.

For my current project, *.exe *.bat *.cmd is almost certainly sufficient, but I figured I'd ask if there was an authoritative list.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about Windows

Related posts about executable