Re: Never Got Used To Those New-Fangled VMS Filename Extensions ...

kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:

According to my understanding of Wikipedia article, the OS that
Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products and that they
published as PC-DOS had no support for relocatable executives. The only
supported format for programs was non-relocatable .com format.
Support for .exe format was added approximately a year later by
Microsoft's programmers, most likely by Mark Zbikowski, who was a young
guy the never worked for Digital Research or for Seattle Computer
Products.

Interesting!

And now that I think about it, CP/M used the .CMD extension for
relocatable executables, which was added on there long after the
.COM extension for absolute executables was used.

So .EXE may have been a Microsoft invention.
--scott

CP/M itself was modelled after RT-11 which is where Kildall got the
idea for the .EXE extension.
--scott

TOPS-20 (based on TENEX) used the .EXE extension on sharable executables,
although TENEX used .SAV on both sharable and nonsharable executables.  Tops-10
used .SAV (or .LOW and .HGH for executables with a sharable segment), until
late in the game when TOPS-20 style sharable executables came to Tops-10.

I believe that RT-11 got .EXE from the larger systems.

--
Rich Alderson   news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen