What is a TXT file
TXT stands for “textfile” which replaced the old name of “flatfile”. This computer file structures series of lines of text. The end of the file is often defined by placing special characters defined as “end-of-file” markers which follow the final line of text. This type container contains plain text but is capable of more. TXT files serve as information storage units to avoid other complications with other file formats. Files affected by data corruption are easier to recover and the user can continue to work on what remains. The downside of using TXT files is the low entropy due to which TXT files take up more space than other text based files.
TXT files contain very little formatting but match accepted format sets by the system terminal or simple text editor. TXT files are universal due to the ability for any text-based program to read TXT files. TXT files are capable of using Unicode to make it easier for various language users to use the files. The ASCII-only text files are interchangeable and readable on Unix, Mac, and Windows. UTF-8 is the most common character set and different from the ASCII due to the Byte Order Mark. It is backwards compatible with ASCII.
Here's a small, but not exhaustive list of programs that can open TXT documents:
- Notepad
- TextEdit
- WordPad
