This is a list of file formats organized by type, seen on computers. Filename extensions are usually noted in parenthesis if they differ from the format name or abbreviation.

Audio

• Lossless
  • Uncompressed
    • AIFF
    • au file format
    • CDDA
    • IFF-8SVX
    • IFF-16SV
    • RAW (raw samples without any header or sync)
    • WAV - Microsoft Wave
  • Compressed
    • FLAC (free lossless codec of the Ogg project)
    • Lossless Audio (.la)
    • LPAC (.pac)
    • Apple Lossless (M4A)
    • Monkey's Audio (APE)
    • OptimFROG (.ofr)
    • RKAU (.rka)
    • Shorten (SHN)
    • TTA free lossless audio codec (True Audio)
    • WavPack (.wv)
    • Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless (WMA)
• Lossy
  • MP2 (MPEG Layer 2)
  • MP3 (MPEG Layer 3)
  • Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
  • Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
  • GSM (GSM Full Rate, originally developed for use in mobile phones)
  • Windows Media Audio (.WMA)
  • AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .m4p, .aac) - Advanced Audio Coding (usually in an MPEG4 container)
  • MPC - Musepack
  • VQF - Yamaha TwinVQ
  • Real Audio (RA, RM)
  • SWA - Macromedia_Shockwave Audio (Same compression as MP3 with additional header information specific to Macromedia Director - see What is the difference between MP3 and SWA files?)
• Music formats
  • MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
  • NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
  • MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
  • S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
  • XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
  • IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
  • MT2 (MadTracker 2 module. It could be resumed as being XM and IT combined with more features like track effects and automation.)
  • MNG (BGM for the Creatures game series, starting from Creatures 2; a free editor and player is available)
  • STF StudioFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.
  • SYN SynFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.

Computer Aided Design

• DXF, or ASCII Drawing Interchange file format
• GERBER, or Gerber file
• EXCELLON, or Excellon file
• IGES
• Intergraph's Intergraph Standard File Formats
• Softimage's dotXSI

Electronic Design Automation

• GDSII
• OASIS, Open Artwork System Interchange Standard
• OpenAccess
• SPICE netlist format (see SPICE, netlist)
• LEF /DEF

Document

These files store formatted text.

• ASCII, Unicode (.txt, .utx (for Unicode))
• Amigaguide
• AWW - Ability Write
• HTML (.html, .htm) and XHTML (.xhtml, .xht, .xml)
• LWP - Lotus Word Pro
• Radix-64
• RTF - Rich Text Format
• SXW - StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Word Processor format
• TeX (.tex)
• Texinfo (.info)
• Troff
• DOC - Microsoft Word
• OpenOffice (employs XML) (http://xml.openoffice.org )
• WPD - WordPerfect
• WPS - Microsoft Works
• WRF - ThinkFree Write
• WRI - Microsoft Write

Spreadsheet

• 123 - Lotus 1-2-3
• AWS - Ability Spreadsheet
• CLF - ThinkFree Calc
• CSV - Comma Separated Values
• gnumeric - Linux gnumeric spreadsheet, gziped XML file
• Quattro
• SXC - StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet
• TAB - tab delimited columns; also TSV (tab separated values)
• XLS - Microsoft Excel worksheets
• WK? - Lotus 1-2-3
• WKS - Microsoft Works

Database

• DBF - DBase III/IV
• MDB - Microsoft Database (Access)
• NSF - Lotus Notes database
• NTF - Lotus Notes database design template
• SQL - bundled SQL queries
• WDB - Microsoft Works Database
• FP? - Filemaker

Presentation

• PPS - Microsoft PowerPoint Show
• PPT - Microsoft PowerPoint
• PRZ - Lotus Freelance Graphics
• SHF - ThinkFree Show

Webpage

• Static
  • HTML (.html, .htm) - HyperText Markup Language
  • XHTML (.xhtml, .xht) - eXtensible HyperText Markup Language
  • XML (.xml)
• Dynamically generated
  • ASP (.asp) - Microsoft Active Server Page
  • ASPX (.aspx) - Microsoft Active Server Page.NET
  • ADP - AOLserver Dynamic Page
  • CFM (.cfm) - ColdFusion
  • CGI (.cgi)
  • Perl (.pl)
  • PHP (.php, .php?, .phtml) - ? is version number
  • SSI (.shtml) - HTML with Server Side Includes

Script

• HTML Applications (.hta)
• ICI (.ici)
• JavaScript (.js)
• PHP (.php, .php?) - ? is version number
• Perl (.pl)
• Python (.py)
• Ruby (.rb)
• Shell script (.sh)
• Tcl (.tcl)
• Visual Basic Script (.vbs)

Graphics

Main article: graphics file formats.

Raster graphics

These files store images as a group of pixels.

• ART - America Online proprietary format.
• BMP
• CUT - Dr. Halo image file
• DjVu - DjVu for scanned documents
• GIF - CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format
• MNG - Multiple Network Graphics, the animated version of PNG.
• MSP - a file format used by old versions of Microsoft Paint. Replaced with BMP in Microsoft Windows 3.0.
• IFF (.iff, .ilbm, .lbm) - ILBM
• JNG - a single-frame MNG using JPEG compression and possibly an alpha channel .
• JPEG, JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) - a lossy image format widely used to display photographic images.
• JP2 - JPEG2000
• LBM - Deluxe Paint image file
• MAX - ScanSoft PaperPort document
• MIFF - ImageMagick's native file format
• PBM - Portable BitMap
• PCX - an lossless format used by ZSoft's PC Paint, popular at one time on DOS systems.
• PGM - Portable Graymap
• PICT - Apple Macintosh PICT image
• PNG - Portable Network Graphic (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
• PPM - Portable Pixmap
• PSD - Adobe Photoshop Drawing
• PSP - Jasc Paint Shop Pro image
• QFX - QuickLink Fax image
• RLE - a run-length encoded image.
• SGI - Silicon Graphics image
• TGA - Truevision Targa image file
• TIFF (.tif or .tiff) Tagged Image File Format (usually lossless, but many variants exist, including lossy ones.)
• XBM - X Window System Bitmap
• XPM - X Window System Pixmap

Vector graphics

Vector graphics use geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images.

• AWG - Ability Draw
• AI - Adobe Illustrator Document
• CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
• CMX - Corel Draw vector image
• DXF - ASCII Drawing Interchange file format, used in AutoCAD
• SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics, employs XML
• Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
  • MOVIE.BYU
  • RenderMan
  • VRML - Virtual Reality Modeling Language
  • X3D

Signal data formats (non-audio)

• ACQ - AcqKnowledge File Format for Windows/PC from Biopac
• BKR - The EEG data format developed at the University of Technology Graz
• BDF - BioSemo data format - similar to EDF but 24bit
• CFWB - Chart Data File Format from ADInstruments
• EDF - European data format
• FEF - File Exchange Format for Vital signs
• GDF - General data formats for biomedical signals
• MFER - Medical waveform Format Encoding Rules
• SCP-ECG - Standard Communication Protocol for Computer assisted electrocardiography
• SIGIF- SIGnal Interchange Format
• and many others [1]

Object code

• a.out classic UNIX object format, now often superseded by ELF
• COM files, used in DOS
• ELF
• MZ EXE (.exe; used in DOS)
• XPI (which is a PKZIP archive that can be run by Mozilla browsers to install software) (.xpi)
• Mach-O (Mach based systems, notably native format of Mac OS X)
• PE (.EXE, .DLL ; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
• PEF (Mac OS versions 9 and under; compatible with Mac OS X via the Classic emulator)
• ZXE - Executable that is generated by the Z++ compiler.

Function Library

• DLL - Microsoft Dynamic Link Libraries
• .so - Shared object (Unix/Linux)
• .dylib - Macintosh Dynamic Library
• .tlb - Windows Type Library

Object Extensions

• VBX - Visual Basic Extensions
• OCX - Object Control Extensions

Page description language

• DVI
• PCL
• PDF
• PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)

• Configurations, Metadata
  • CSS
  • XSLT (.xslt) - XML Style Sheet

Scientific data formats (Data Exchange)

• CDF Common data format [2]
• FITS Flexible Image Transport format - Standard data format for astronomy [3]
• NetCDF Network common data format [4]
• HDF Hirarchical Data Format [5]
• SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)

Tabulated data

• tab
• Comma-separated values (CSV)
• dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)

Archive and compressed

• 7z
• ace
• arj
• bzip2 (.bz2)
• cab - Microsoft Cabinet
• deb
• gzip (.gz)
• jar
• LHA (.lzh)
• lzo
• lzx
• Parchive (.par, .par2)
• rar
• sit - Stuffit (Macintosh)
• tar
• .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
• zoo
• zip

Video

Main article: video file formats.

• AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
• Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
• ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
• AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
• Macromedia Flash (.swf for viewing, .fla for producing) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
• Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a container format, which enables any video format such as MPEG-4 or XviD to be used along with other content such as subtitles and detailed meta information)
• MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
• MPEG
• MXF
• Tarkin (Ogg project, all Tarkin files are Ogg files)
• Theora (Ogg project, all Theora files are Ogg files)
• OGM (OGM is a container format created so that Ogg Vorbis could be used for the audio of a video as this could not be done with AVI)
• MOV (QuickTime, a container format, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common)
• RealMedia
• Xvid

Geographic Information System

• DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
• World TIFF (Geographically located raster data)
• GeoTIFF (Geographically located raster data)

External link

• Wotsit's format - A file format reference for programmers
• icdatamaster.com - A collection of file extensions and their descriptions (also has German and French versions)
• FILExt - another collection, with mime-types
• cryer.co.uk - another collection
• whatis?com - another collection
• [6] - list of scientific/signal data formats