Appendix A. The Perl script

Originally, in order to solve my problem, I made a small Perl script that generates dummy files wearing all possible file extensions under Windows. I included special characters in my analysis, to be sure that nothing is overlooked. The program is displayed below. That version is for 3-characters extensions, remove one or two loops to make 2-characters and 1-character extensions. For analysis clarity, I sorted the files under folders starting by the first letter of the extension. This is necessary for having decent refresh times from Windows Explorer. I also stopped at 3-letters extensions, since four letter extensions would have generated too many combinations to look at, but that doens't mean that they don't exist (.html, for example). The Perl script is provided here as reference material, and can be used or modified to repeat similar experiences.

#!C:\perl 
@alpha=("a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z","0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","\$","_",")","(","&","^","%","#","@","!","'","-","=","+",";","[","]","{","}");
 for($i=0;$i<55;$i++)
	{
	mkdir $alpha[$i];
	chdir $alpha[$i];
	for($j=0;$j<55;$j++)
		{for($k=0;$k<55;$k++)
			{
			$ext=$alpha[$i].$alpha[$j].$alpha[$k];
			$filename="test.".$ext;
			open (TESTFILE, ">>".$filename);
			print TESTFILE "bla";
			print "#";
			close (TESTFILE);
			}
		}
	chdir "..";
	}