Differences between TIFF,TIF,tiff,tif

I have seen TIFF files having various extensions - TIFF,TIF,tiff,tif. Are they same? Can I safely rename a file with TIFF extension to tif or will it cause loss of information?

3 Answers

They all represent the same TIFF file format. The canonical spelling would be .tiff, but short .tif is recognized almost everywhere. Upper-case .TIFF and .TIF are less common, but Windows recognizes them.

• The short .tif extension comes from the "8.3" limitation of MS-DOS and 16-bit windows. While newer operating systems do not have such restrictions, many people are still reluctant to use newer features (there even happen holy wars against spaces in names, but it's another topic) or type tif out of habit.

• The upper-case variations might have been introduced in a similar way: Windows filenames are case-insensitive, and older operating and file systems weren't case-preserving either: even Windows 9x would still occassionally force a file name to all-upper or all-lower case, resulting in NAME.TIF instead of Name.tif. (Windows NT and all Unix-based systems preserve case in file names.)

Yes, the internal file format is the same.

7

There is no difference. Years ago, the MACS and APPLES used the four-letter extensions. Nowadays MS Office 2007 is using four-letter extensions.

2

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