file extension with colon

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Guest

Hi. Im writing a set of smaller editors for custom xml based file types. I
want each of these files to be associated with the appropriate editor.
However I find short extensions to be a little hard to read so I want the
full content description of the files such as *.notebook and *.project. But I
realize that this can cause a lot of collisions with other applications. So
my thought was to create file extensions that contains multiple delimited
words such as *.notebook.xml. But apparently a dot was not possible because
the extension always is _after_ the last dot. I tried some other characters
and ended up with colon as a possible choice, *.notebook,xml.

My question is: Can I use a colon in my filetype extension without it
causing any problems with the dotnet framework or windows in general? Or do
you have any other suggestion on how I would go about and name these files?
 
Andreas said:
Hi. Im writing a set of smaller editors for custom xml based file types. I
want each of these files to be associated with the appropriate editor.
However I find short extensions to be a little hard to read so I want the
full content description of the files such as *.notebook and *.project.
But I
realize that this can cause a lot of collisions with other applications.
So
my thought was to create file extensions that contains multiple delimited
words such as *.notebook.xml. But apparently a dot was not possible
because
the extension always is _after_ the last dot. I tried some other
characters
and ended up with colon as a possible choice, *.notebook,xml.

My question is: Can I use a colon in my filetype extension without it
causing any problems with the dotnet framework or windows in general? Or
do
you have any other suggestion on how I would go about and name these
files?
Click to expand...

By renaming a .txt file in Win XP, you can see that use of the colon (:) is
not permitted. However the semi-colon (;) and the comma (,) appear to be
accepted.

As your example shows a comma between "notebook" and "xml" in your example,
you'll be OK with that from a Windows perspective. Experimentation within
..NET should quickly reveal any issues.

As an alternative, what's wrong with creating your own extension for your
app that won't conflict with others?
 
As an alternative, what's wrong with creating your own extension for your
app that won't conflict with others?
Click to expand...

When using clear-text-extensions, eventually I will end up with a filename
that may quite possible conflict with another file type. And Im not
perticulary fond of cryptic abbreviation. So creating something in between
maybe right. I mean if *.notebook,xml or *.notebook;{mynamespaceabbreviation}
is possible in the .net framework (as you say its possible in windows) then
it could suffice for now.

Thanks for your input!
 
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