Basics of computing

Hexadecimal

Colors

Image

• Portable PixMap (1988-)
  • Examples
  • 
  • 

Charsets and encodings

• ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange (1967)

  • printable
  • complete

• Code Pages

  • IBM PC cp437
  • Icelandic cp861, Denmark/Norway cp865, Greek cp737 Windows-1252
  • Central European cp852, KOI8-R

• EBCDIC: Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (1964)

• APL: A Programming Language - EBCDIC CodePage 293 (1966)

• PETSCII - PET Standard Code of Information Interchange / CBM ASCII (1977-)

File formats

Containers:

• IFF: EA Interchange File Format (1985)
• RIFF: Resource Interchange File Format (1991)
• CFBF/CDFv2: Compound file binary format / Composite Document file v2 (DOCFILE / D0CF11E) (1997-2004)
• EBML: Extensible Binary Meta Language (2002)
• ISOBMFF: ISO Base Media File Format (2004?)

Executables

• ELF - Executable and linkable format

Microsoft

• Com (Dos [transient] commands)

• Exe - MZ executable [DOS] (1981-)

  • 
  • EXE (PE Dos Stub)

• Pif - Program information File (Windows 1-, 1985-)

• NE - New Executable (Windows 1-2000, 1985-2000)

• LE - Linear Executable (DOS, 1992)

• PE - Portable executable (Windows NT 3.1-, 1993-)

Apple

• Rsrc - Resource fork (Mac System 1-, 1984)

• Pef - Preferred Executable Format (Mac System 7-9 , 1991-1999)

• Macho - Mach Object (NeXTSTEP, MacOS, iOS)

  • (Little 32b)
  • (Little 64b)
  • (Big 32b PowerPC)
  • (Big 64b PowerPC)

• Fat/Universal Mach-o

Others

• Class - Java / JVM (1994)

• DEX - Dalvik Executable [Android] (2008?)

• PYC - Compiled python (1998-)

• Swf - ShockWave Flash / Small web file (1995?)

• Dol - Nintendo Dolphin (Gamecube, Wii, 2001-2017)

  • executable
  • complete header

• NRO - NX (Nintendo Switch) Relocatable Object

• OFF - OS/360 Object File format [EBCDIC] (1966?)

• Tos - GEMDOS Program format [Atari ST] (1985)

• Hunk - Amiga Hunk [Commodore AmigaOS] (1985)

• TE - Terse Executable [UEFI] (2017?)

• Wasm - WebAssembly (2017)

Images

• Bpg - Better/Bellard Portable Graphics (2014)

• Png - Portable Network graphics (1996)

  • Png Plus: a PNG with OLE chunks, by Microsoft Picture It!

• Jpeg (JFIF) - Joint Photographic Experts Group - File Interchange Format (1992)

• Dicom - Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (1985)

• Psd - PhotoShop Document (1990)

• Xbm - X BitMap (X11 1989)

• Netpbm (1988)

  • Pgm - Portable Graymap
  • Ppm - Portable Pixmap

• [I]Lbm - Interleaved Bitmap [IFF] (1985)

• BMP - Bitmap [Windows 2 (1987)]

  • v1
  • v3 (1991)
  • v5 (1998)

Gif - Graphics Interchange Format (1987)

• 

• v89, with a comment

• TIFF - Tag Image File Format (1986)

  • little endian
  • big endian

• PCX - Zsoft Picture exchange [DOS] (1982)

  • 16 colors
  • 256 colors

• TGA/TARGA - TrueVision [Advanced Raster] Graphics Adapter (1984)

• ICO - Windows icon (1985)

  • w/ BMP (1995?)
  • w/ PNG (2006)

• Pif - Portable Image Format (2022)

• Qoi - Quite Ok Image (2021)

• 1ba - 1-bit animation (2023)

Videos

• Mp4 [ISOBMFF] (2001)

• Mkv - Matroska video [EBML] (2002)

• Y4M - Yuv4mpeg (2001)

  • (mono)
  • (yuv)

Archives

• Zlib/Deflate/Zip/GZIP?

• Gzip - GNU zip (1992)

• Ar - Archive (1971)

• Tar - Tape archive (1979)

• Copy [files] In & out [of archives] (1977)

  • binary
  • ASCII

• Zip - PkZip (1989)

  • Crx - Chrome extension (2017)

• Lzma - Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm (1998)

  • 
  • with End of Stream marker

• 7zip (1999)

• Xar (2007)

• Xz (2009)

• Microsoft Compress (1990)

• Cab - Microsoft Cabinet File (Mscf) (1995?)

• Rpm - Redhat/RPM Package Manager (1997)

• Rar - Roschal Archive (1993)

  • v1.4
  • v4 (1996)
  • v5 (2013)

• Arj - Archived by Robert Jung (1991?)

• bz2 - Bzip2 (1996)

Wad - Where's all the data? (1993)

• (structure)
• (in Doom)

Zstd - Zstandard (2015)

• 

• w/ Skippable frame

• LZ4 (2011)

Documents

• Eps - Encapsulated PostScript (1987)

• Pdf - Portable document format (1992)

• RTF - Rich text format (1987)

• Microsoft Office

  • Msi - Microsoft Installer [CFB]
  • Docm - WordML/WordProcessingML (Microsoft Office XML format) - XML (2002)
  • ActiveMime - MSO XML Bindata
  • Docx - Doc XML (Office Open XML) - ZIP+XMLs (2006)

Multiplan - Excel:

• Sylk - Symbolic link - Multiplan 1 (1984-), Excel 1 (1986-)

• Biff - Binary Interchange File Format

  • v2: v2, 1989 (raw)
  • v8: 97-2003, 1998-2004 [CFB]

• Hlp - WinHelp (1990)

• Chm - Compiled HTML help - Info-Tech Storage Format (1997)

• One - One Note (2014-)

• Wmf - Windows Metafile Format (1992)

  • 
  • with Placeable header

• Emf - Enhanced Metafile Format (1993)

Sound

• 8svx - 8-bit sample voice [Amiga][Iff] (1985)

• AIFF - Audio interchange file format [Apple][Iff] (1988)

  • 
  • AIFC / AIFF-C - Compressed (1991)

• Wav - Waveform [Riff] (1991)

• Rmi - Riff Midi [Riff]

• Midi - Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Metadata

• IPTC IIM / International Press Telecommunications Council - Information Interchange Model (1991)
• Exif - Exchangeable Image File Format (1995)
• XMP - Extensible Metadata Platform (2001)

Serialization

• ASN.1 - Abstract Syntax Notation One (1984)
• Bplist - Binary property list (2000)
• Protobuf - Protocol buffers (2001)

Vector Fonts

• OTF - OpenType Font Format (1996)
• TTF - TrueType Font (1991)
  • with a Location Table v1
  • with a Location Table v2
• Woff - Web Open Font Format (2012)
  • Woff2 - Web Open Font Format 2.0 (2018)

Others

• Mbr+DPT - Master Boot Record with Disk Partitions Table (1983)

• Lnk - Shell link [Windows] (1995?)

• Cdix - ClangD Index [Riff] (2018)

• Hex records - Intel[lec] Hexadecimal object (1973)

• Uf2 - USB Flashing format (2016)

Opcodes

Weird files

101

Dissection with more descriptions, and explanations (my initial style of binary posters).

source Inkscape SVGs and PoC with their sources are included

PE 101

Others

Structures

A layout of the various format's structures

Opcodes' tables

Available in compact

or 'with descriptions' formats

Cryptography

Jneavat! N qnatrebhf pelcgbtencuvp bowrpg vf urnqvat lbhe jnl....