[Info-vax] Never Got Used To Those New-Fangled VMS Filename Extensions ...

[Rich Alderson]

kludge at panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

> Michael S  <already5chosen at 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 at alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen