From: John Tserkezis 
Reply-To: Fidonet AVtech Echo 

David Drummond wrote:

>  PQ> "MZ" stands for Mark Zbikowksi who was the principal
architect of 
>  PQ> DOS.

> What ever the guy's name, I do not think the mere prepending of the letters MZ
> to something will make it actually execute.

  If the file extension is COM or EXE, it *WILL* execute.  _How_ it executes 
depends on the first two characters.  If it's not 'MZ', it assumes intel 
compiled machine code, if it IS 'MZ', then the OS reads the header (usually 512 
bytes, but could be more), and executes code depending on how the header 
instructs it to do so.

  The OS itself does not care if the extension is COM or EXE, and you can in 
fact rename them at will, and still have it all work correctly. (depending of 
course if any other applications call those EXE's by name..).

  You still however, need to purposly _run_ said COM or EXE files to execute 
the code.  Just the fact that it may live as a file on your hard drive does not 
mean it _will_ run.  Unless of course it's instructed by some other process, 
but that process (if the purpose is malicous) is probably in on the game as 
well, and you still have to manually run that too.

-- 
       -o)
       /\\    Message void if penguin violated
      _\_V    Don't mess with the penguin

Linux Registered User # 302622                         http://counter.li.org>
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