On Tue, 2010-01-05 at 16:18 +0100, Daniel Egeberg wrote: > On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 16:09, Shawn McKenzie <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Of course this doesn't work for something like 'My.Word.Document.docx' > > or 'archive_v2.0.1.tar.gz', but I don't know what will with extensions > > being variable length and possibly composed of multiple periods. > > I suppose a solution to that could be having a list of known file > extensions and use that while falling back to one of the methods given > in this thread if there is no match in the list. Of course you would > then have to check .tar.gz before .gz if you're just iterating through > a list. You might also just choose the longest match (in terms of > number of periods). > That was my thought on how operating systems did it. If it maybe can't find a matching pattern, then it can fall back to matching anything after the last period. It always puzzles me, because some.archive.tar.gz is a valid file, but the extension is .tar.gz and the filename is some.archive. I guess it must compare the full filename to a list of knowns, and then try it's best after that. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
