Get Windows to treat files with the same extension differently

Question

Multiple programs use the same file extension, but the formats are totally different and incompatible. For instance, I have .sch files on my computer that are in at least 5 different formats (TINA, PSpice, PADS, Protel, and Eagle). Is there a way to get Windows to treat them differently, so that double-clicking on such a file opens it in the program it's meant to be opened in?

Linux uses magic numbers in the files themselves to differentiate, and only uses file extensions as a fallback plan. (All PNG files start with the bytes 89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A, for instance, regardless of what you name them.) It would be nice if Windows could support this, but probably very difficult to implement. Maybe something simpler like a second-level extension, like filename.program1.sch and filename.program2.sch? Maybe some kind of filter that renames files on the fly?

Better idea: Associating the ambiguous extension with a pre-processor (.bat file or dedicated app) that checks for a second-level extension or goes into the file itself and scans for the magic number and then launches the appropriate program?

Answer 1

I solved it myself:

I made a Python script that reads the first few bytes of a file and compares them to a dictionary, then launches the appropriate program based on the magic numbers.

import sys
import subprocess

magic_numbers = {
'OB': r'C:\Program Files (x86)\DesignSoft\Tina 9 - TI\TINA.EXE', # TINA
'*v': r'C:\Program Files (x86)\Orcad\Capture\Capture.exe', #PSpice
'DP': r'C:\Program Files (x86)\Design Explorer 99 SE\Client99SE.exe', #Protel
'\x00\xFE': r'C:\MentorGraphics\9.0PADS\SDD_HOME\Programs\powerlogic.exe', #PADS Logic
'\x10\x80': r'C:\Program Files (x86)\EAGLE-5.11.0\bin\eagle.exe', # Eagle
}

filename = sys.argv[1]
f = open(filename, 'rb')
# Read just enough bytes to match the keys
magic_n = f.read(max(map(len, magic_numbers)))

subprocess.call([magic_numbers[magic_n], filename])

Latest version will be here: Launch ambiguous files in the appropriate program

I tried to associate the file extension with this script, but Windows 7 didn't let me. It just associated it with Python instead, so I went into the registry and added the script name manually.

Room for improvement, but it works. I can double-click on different files with the same .sch extension and they open in different apps.

Update: I've converted it to an .exe using cx_freeze, with an external YAML config file, and it's easy to associate. See also this libmagic proposal. Not sure if I should make this into a full-fledged "libmagic launcher for Windows" or if it's better to handle only one file extension with one .exe and a simple YAML file.

Answer 2

Windows does not launch files based on any information in the file - building a database for that would take an incredible amount of work and programming. The only true way to identify a file is by the binary signatures in the file, if the file even has it, and this is up to the software author to implement.

In Windows, files are passed to the program you specify for a particular file extension. Windows determines a file's extension as the substring which follows the last occurrence of a period, so it's not possible with the file names you posted.

You have to either re-name the files (and give them unique file extensions), or write a batch file to launch the appropriate application for you. For more details, see this Technet article.

Answer 3

To start, you can rename one of the types of files to have a new extension, and use the "open with" dialogue to set a default program to open those types of files.

This doesn't deal with the renaming problem though. But you simplify things by making a specific folder where you put all of the files from one of the programs. Then you can write a script to automatically rename files in that folder to your new file extension.

You may have trouble with an "Open File" dialogue in your program, depending on how it is set up. But if you have a single folder where all of your files are you should be able to just use that.

A more complicated, but potentially better way would be to create a proxy program. Keep all file extensions, but have them be opened by the proxy program. Have your program examine the binary and choose which type of file it is and which program to start. This will require you to spend some time writing your program, which may or may not be worth it to you.

Answer 4

Microsoft Visual Studio implements your last idea. When you launch a .sln file, a small stub checks the solution version number and launches the correct version of Visual Studio (if you've got multiple versions installed).

Of course, coordination here is a bit easier since (A) the file format is designed for this and (B) they're all versions of the same software, from the same manufacturer.

Answer 5

A quick solution is to add additional context entries to the explorer context menu. Or to use the 'open with' context entry. The first is more comfortable as one can add call parameters and specify 'telling' names. It also allows opening a file with different versions of the same program (if installed parallel).

Of course, this aproach is not automatic. One has to know the proper application. But for file types where the database based detection would fail (e.g. text files or other files without a "magic number"), you always have the choice.

BTW: The less-known OS 'GEOS' (which was a Win3 competitor at its tiem and far ahead) had a fixed 256 bytes header for all files where the creating application, icon an copyright notices were stored (along with a free field for own notes). As this was part of the file and not the file system or an OS dictionary, it was transparent when files were moved across file systems or even to a different OS (there was an explorer extension for W95).