4 ms·
Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the zip file format, the bytes of which are 0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04 The values 0x50
by smarks 10y ago
Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the zip file format, the bytes of which are
0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04
The values 0x50 0x4b are 'P' 'K' in ASCII.
Note also that every Java JAR file is also a ZIP file, so they all begin with the same magic number.
- WalterBright 10y agoWindows executables start with "MZ", for Mark Zbikowski. Edit: fixed the name
- uiri 10y agoI tried googling this but nothing came up until I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable which says it stands for Mark Zbikowski (which is supported by a quick Google of that name).
- WalterBright 10y agoYou're right, I mis-remembered it. Thanks for the correction!
- gonzo 10y agoFreeBSD (and other BSD) UFS2 file systems have a magic number that coincides with Kirk McKusick's birthday. #define FS_UFS2_MAGIC 0x19540119
- JdeBP 10y agoThe birthdays of Linus Torvalds and some of his relatives are encoded, in hexadecimal, in the magic constants passed to the Linux reboot() system call.
- agumonkey 10y agoMore recently I found out that systemd binary format starts with LPKS and a few other initials. Those who know the dev team can easily find which is who.
- bluedino 10y agoAs a kid poking around with the built-in DOSSHELL hex viewer, I thought it was slang for MS/Microsoft
- DonHopkins 10y agoHe's also been immortalized in artwork: https://www.flickr.com/photos/silentarmy/351314710 https://www.flickr.com/photos/silentarmy/351314710