file attributes. is there a standard?

[fguihen]

You know the way when you open an explorer window in windows, and you can sort by basically any attributes the files you are viewing have, well, are all those attributes programmed into windows, or does it just look at the files and know what attributes it can display? On the attributes themselves, is there a standard way that attributes are stored in a file? i know they are at the end, but are there a set of charachters that denotes the start of the attributes section of the file?

[Wraith]

Attributes are stored in the filesystem, they're metadata. If you mean properties then no there is no standard way of dealing with them.

[snarfblam]

Different attributes are stored in different ways. The filename, creation and modification date are stored in the FAT. Some attributes are file-type specific. Data such as artist and title are stored inside files, either at the beginning or the end, and differently inside different file types. Others are stored in alternate data streams in the file system. Windows just nicely ties them all into a unified interface.