ELI5 why .ini (or other config) files exist if they are just plain text? : r/explainlikeimfive
Convention. You can rename config.ini to cheeseburger.avi, as long as the content structure remains the same and the program looks for that file name, it will work. However, in IT culture this is considered a dick move, so people simply don't do it. Unfortunately, MIME type detection is still done by filename extension in most situations, so renaming config.ini to cheeseburger.avi will cause windows to open Media Player which in turn will error out. That is one of the least harmful situations though. Well, yes, it is usually done by file extension because that’s the whole point of having file extensions. You have to have some way of determining what type of file something is, so why not put it as a code at the end of the name? This makes it easy to read and easy to change. File extensions for that kind of stuff are very "windows" though. If you look at the other large family of OSes in the unix family are much less extension happy/dependent. They operate the same way. The only differen