Dear Software Developers,
please don’t ever assign .dat to your app. Given how many other apps there are with the same generic, non-descriptive file name extension, yours just doens’t and out enough that I’d possibly want it as the default.
In fact, don’t ever store your files as .dat at all. What kind of file isn’t “data”? Why don’t you just use .file while you’re at it? Or .content?
Going through FilExt’s list for applications that use the extension is cringe-worthy, but Microsoft has an answer that is far more to the point:
A wide range of applications create files with this file extension but with different file formats.
Don’t think .dat means “this file isn’t meant to be opened directly by users”, either. Microsoft’s uses suggest this; after all, you wouldn’t generally want to directly manipulate the innards Internet Explorer’s cache. But MPEG1 movies?
The very existence of extensions is a poor design choice already; let’s not make it even worse by using meaningless generic terms as “types”.
Your Own Thoughts
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