[G4] Opening .exe files on a mac

Robert A. Rosenberg hal9001 at panix.com
Sun Nov 30 22:28:55 PST 2003


At 23:33 -0500 on 11/30/2003, sr ferenczy wrote about Re: [G4] 
Opening .exe files on a mac:

>no, .exe is a windows executable file (akin to the os x .app) this 
>basically means it is a program from windows, and not compatible 
>with macs....

NOT TRUE all the time.

There are two types of .exe files. You are thinking of applications 
where your comment is accurate.

The 2nd type of .exe is a Self Extracting Archive (the equivalent of 
a .sea file produced by StuffIt). These, while they are applications, 
have the application being the unArchiver and contain an embedded 
payload of an Archive. These types of .exe can be feed to StuffIt 
Expander which will recognize them, ignore the unArchive code, and 
unArchive the embedded ZIP or SIT archive as if the file was a ZIP or 
SIT. The files being referenced seem to me to be of this 2nd type and 
thus the CORRECT answer is "Feed them to StuffIt Expander to extract 
the archived contents".

Note: Unless the actual Plug-Ins are usable on the Mac, the resulting 
extracted files will still be useless.

>
>sandor
>
>On Nov 30, 2003, at 11:16 PM, Shannon Nugent wrote:
>
>>Is there any way I can open .exe files on my mac?  Gary,  you gave 
>>a CD of Photoshop plugins,  but all the files are in ".exe" format. 
>>Executable files.  I'm not sure I can use those.  Does anybody know 
>>of a way I can open and convert those files to a useable format, 
>>or should I just have Gary burn me some new copies in a Mac format?



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