txtfile

txtfile is a plain text data file that typically uses the .txt extension. It contains only unformatted, human-readable characters and has no richer styling, images, or embedded media. Because it stores only text, a txtfile can be opened by almost any text editor on any operating system.

txtfiles rely on character encodings to define how characters are represented. Common encodings include ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. UTF-8 is widely used today because it supports multilingual text. Some txtfiles may include a Byte Order Mark (BOM), while others do not. Line endings also vary by platform: LF for Unix-like systems, CRLF for Windows, and historically CR on older Mac systems.

Common uses of txtfiles include storing source code, configuration settings, logs, and notes, or serving as a simple data interchange format when formatting is unnecessary. Their simplicity and universal support make them highly portable and easy to process with basic tooling, scripts, or text-search utilities.

Historically, plain text and the ASCII encoding emerged early in computing and became a standard for interoperability. The .txt extension became conventional for unformatted text files. In contemporary practice, UTF-8 has largely supplanted ASCII as the default encoding for multilingual content, while ASCII remains compatible with many systems.

Limitations include the lack of styling, metadata, or embedded media. For documents requiring structure or presentation, other formats such as JSON, YAML, XML, or PDF may be more appropriate. Mislabeling a binary file as a txtfile can lead to misinterpretation or data loss.

See also: plain text, ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8, text editor, configuration file, log file.