[fitsbits] Start of "Foreign File Encapsulation" Public Comment Period

[MJFitzpatrick at gmail.com]

Peter Bunclark wrote:

> x ? Why would a file be executable? In the tradition of the
> omni-platform transportability of FITS files, it is unlikely that
> a file would be really executable.  If the executable was intended
> to go onto a machine of the same architecture (and libc....) then
> why use FITS?
>
> An example of an executable file, however, would be a virus.

Another example would be a shell-script (requiring the execute bits),
bash/tcsh are pretty ubiquitous and portable.  The extension is meant
to capture any foreign blob, this could include say a perl script used
as a pipeline recipe but stored in a foreign extension because the
archive
saving it is tuned to FITS files.  Compiled binaries are allowed as
well,
but you'd be nuts to save them in this way.

-Mike