Executable envelopes

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File Format
Name Executable envelopes
Ontology

Executable envelopes refers to a diverse class of files that use a standard executable format, but which were generated in a formulaic way from some original file (which may or may not have itself been executable). They usually consist of a boilerplate decoder section, plus a payload section that could potentially be extracted to a standard format.

Contents

Executable compression

Refer to Executable compression.

Some executable compression utilities can also do executable obfuscation, encryption and password protection, expiration, etc.

Self-extracting archives

Most self-extracting archive formats are covered (or would be covered) in the article for the corresponding Archiving format.

A few are listed at Archiving#Self-extracting archives, especially if they have their own article.

Self-extracting installers

Self-extracting installer formats are listed at Archiving#Program/App/Applet/Installer specialized archive formats, along with other formats.

Executable documents

(A document in some known format, combined with a viewer for that format.)

Most such formats are covered (or would be covered) in the article for the corresponding document format. There are probably a lot of old self-displaying raster graphics formats of this type, e.g. self-running FLI, but they are rarely documented specially.

Executable libraries

(Multiple executable files combined into one executable file.)

Transfer-encoded executables

(A file that remains executable despite having had a transfer encoding or the like applied. This is impossible or impractical with most executable formats, unless they are very "raw", as .COM format is.)

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