file extension name collision

I was recently browsing through some of my data files and noticed that windows has started calling my *.pdb files "program debug database" files. For many years, however these files were always understood (at least by me and everyone else in the science world) as being "protein data bank" files. The *.pdb file is the gold standard for protein structure data files, and the Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/Welcome.do) maintains a huge database of these files.

When I open a protein databank file now (after installing Visual C++ Express), Windows gives me a nasty dialogue about how this is a system file needed by the operating system etc.

Is this a problem How do I get around this problem if I tell the computer to always use wordpad to open my *.pdb structure files, what will happen if I need to use a real program debug file

Thanks,
Jeff

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file extension name collision

aninflal

Program database files have been around for at least 15 years. I'm not sure why only recently has the Visual Studio installations started to associate pdb files with a particular application.

That's all it is, the PDB extension is merely associated with an application so other applications (like the Windows shell/Explorer) know how to handle the file. You can simply do what you've done without affecting how Visual Studio loads PDB files (unless it loads a Protein DataBank file...). Or, you can remove the association of PDB files to Visual Studio altogether.
file extension name collision

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