[GNC] General Ledger

[Adrien Monteleone]

No, it is a csv, but you have the option to specify an extension or not.

Linux and Mac don’t generally care if a file has an extension. They determine the file type independent of it.

Windows on the other hand does rely somewhat (if not exclusively) on the extension. (not sure if that changed in Win10 or not)

You don’t always have to have an extension in Windows, but that means you can’t double-click a file to open it with the proper app.

You can’t change the file type as you found, (as reported by Windows) but you can add or change the extension. Windows will then use the extension to determine the file type and associate a default app to open it.

As an experiment, take that same file and change the extension to “.txt”, and Windows will now report it as a text file type and open it with your default plain text editor. (probably Notepad)

Then change it to “.xls” and observe how Windows changes the type again, and what app it associates with it.

*note - a ‘csv’ file (for Comma Separated Values) *is* a plain text file with each line a list of values separated by comma. (or other character as you happened to designate in the export dialog) Some apps that read csv will accept any separator or let you specify on import. Some choke on anything but a comma. GnuCash gives you the flexibility to choose what you need.

The problem you found isn’t a problem with GnuCash, it is a limitation of how the Windows OS recognizes files.

Regards,
Adrien


> On Mar 29, 2020 w14d89, at 6:12 PM, Adrian Yong <adrianyong.88park at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> *Your Point No. 5 is interesting.*
> 
> Gnucash's instruction is Export XXXXX to csv. One would be led to believe
> that the file type is automatically csv. But in reality, you are saying
> that it can export to any format provided you specify the file type as an
> extension to the filename.
> 
> All your other comments are relevant if we get this file type specification
> step correct.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrian
>