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Why do people call an executable file (.exe) a binary file?
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Brumby:
Hey, slow down.  I've run out of popcorn.   ;D
rsjsouza:
All files are binary and text files are a subset; if the order of the bits of the ASCII characters of a text file is changed, it becomes unreadable.

Thinking a bit more about that, I think a possible "definition" (or just one more element to try and define it) is that text files can be created and interpreted by a human without aids other than a text input device (e.g. keyboard, optical pointer) and a display device (printer, character display, graphical display, etc.).

Or maybe not. It is getting late here... Good evening y'all!
Back2Volts:

--- Quote from: cgroen on April 25, 2020, 11:27:26 am ---
--- Quote from: LeoTech on April 25, 2020, 10:47:11 am ---As great as the internet is, this is just a stupid mistake that somebody once made and now everybody keeps repeating that.

Leo

--- End quote ---

 :-DD Not sure how old you are, but we called files binary and non-binary long before the internet (as we know it today) conquered  the world  ^-^
Calling a file "binary" is as common now as it were 40 years ago from where I'm from.

--- End quote ---

Yes, this question goes right along with "Did phones really have a round disk with holes?"    ;D
Nerull:

--- Quote from: rsjsouza on April 27, 2020, 01:17:52 am ---
--- Quote from: IanB on April 26, 2020, 09:26:47 pm ---I think T3sl4co1l had the best answer, which is that a binary file is one where the exact order and value of the bytes is critical and must not be changed. If you copy a binary file, the copy must have exactly the same bytes in exactly the same order with no additions, removals, or replacements, or the file will be corrupted. With a text file this is not necessarily the case, for example a line end marker of LF on one system may be replaced by CR+LF on another system without changing the meaning of the file.

--- End quote ---
If only the world was so simple... :)

A XML file is not a binary file, but it can't also have the order of text changed or removed. A batch or shell script falls into the same category and, to top it off, is an executable. These have more lax restrictions than a binary, but not as much as a composed text.

The definition has to be related to the human readability.

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Sure it can. Changing the line endings will not break an XML file, generally.

That's why FTP has 'ASCII' and 'BINARY' transmission modes. Binary mode preserves a file byte for byte, precisely. ASCII does translations between different operating system text encoding standards. The sending host is responsible for transforming the text file into a standard NVT-ASCII format from whatever its native format is, and the receiving host is responsible for doing the reverse.
james_s:
The key to all of this is that language is an imprecise art form, certainly English is notorious, I can't comment on the nature of other languages.

I think it's pretty clear that the origin of the term comes from the fact that human readable source code goes into a compiler/linker/assembler and a non-human-readable binary file comes out. The term "binary" differentiates the compiled code from human-readable source.

Beyond that we're back to the fact that language is imprecise and has many nuances. There are binary files that are neither human readable nor are they compiled from source or executable, deciding what to call a given file is not always clear cut and there are multiple correct answers in many cases. It's not sufficient in many cases to simply read the words and interpret them literally, I could go on all day listing examples of common phrases that are nonsensical if interpreted absolutely literally.
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