Windows – Executable files in Mac OS X vs Windows

binary filesmacoswindows

I have seen that every executable file in Windows has an extension of .exe. But Mac OS X doesn't have the same.

Windows executes .exe files. Then what kind of files does Mac OS X execute?

What is the difference between both operating system's execution of applications?

Even I found that windows setups has the same extension .exe but on a Mac setups have extension of .dmg

Would you please share your knowledge with me about .dmg & executables on Macs vs. Windows?

Best Answer

Extensions don't actually change what type of file something is, although they often do hint to the system what do do with a particular item.

DMGs are not executables, they are disc images. They are files that act as discs, which often contain the executables and other files for applications. When you double-click on one, the system mounts it and you then have access to the files inside.

Both Windows and OS X execute binary executable files, although they are in different formats. The big difference in what a user sees if using the GUI is that on Windows, you usually see the .exe executable file, which resides in a folder that contains other files and information that the program uses. On OS X, all those other files, along with the primary executable, are contained in a "bundle" (really a folder) with the extension .app. Double clicking on a .app bundle will execute the internal executable and load your application.

Outside of the GUI, in the actual file structure, Mac and Windows systems are really quite similar; these differences are mostly a question of how the system presents things to the user for manipulation in the GUI.

Related Solutions

Linux – Why Won’t Windows EXE Files Work?

Linux and Windows executables use different formats. Linux uses the ELF format on most architectures, while Windows uses the PE format. ELF is better suited to the way Linux manages shared libraries, and PE is better suited to the way Windows manages shared libraries, but there's no fundamental reason why Linux couldn't execute PE executables or Windows ELF executables. In fact Linux can execute PE executables, through Wine.

The difficulty is that Windows and Linux have completely different APIs: they have different kernel interfaces and sets of libraries. So to actually run a Windows application, Linux would need to emulate all the API calls that the application makes. That's a lot of work. Wine does it to some extent, but it's very hard, especially since the maker of Windows doesn't cooperate. You can compare it with, say, learning English when your native language is Chinese: the executable format is the alphabet (not that hard to master), the API is the vocabulary (takes years to get to a level where you can start reading literature).

Executable File Extensions on Windows

The basic "executable" files (the ones Windows looks to execute via the PATH) are stored in an environmental variable called PATHEXT. You can see this from a command prompt:

C:\>set PATHEXT

On my machine, I get this (WinXP):

PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.PSC1

This is not an exclusive list. Windows will also execute other files (for instance, screen savers have an extension of .scr and are executables); Windows will also allow execution of other file extensions, but the ones listed above are the default executable extensions.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – Why Won’t Windows EXE Files Work?

Executable File Extensions on Windows

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