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Comment by nostalgiac | Hacker News Reader

Nothing new about this as they've been around for a long time.

As a sysadmin myself we have set all computers to open .js files with notepad by default (rather than the Windows Scripting Engine) so they will not execute if opened accidentally.

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Does ntfs not have an executable bit as part of its permissions??

Yes, it has "Read & Execute". I don't see how this is related though.

Another Windoze joke I guess.

It has read and execute. However, the JS file is not _executed_; it's _read_ by the interpreter. So an executable bit wouldn't matter as the file could still be read by any interpreter.

The guy you're replying to is probably used to linux where you can interpret a script the same way you run an executable: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/fs/binfmt_script.c

You can even add your own executable formats to do stuff like running Java class files by typing `./main.class`: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt

Of course, you can run "<interpreter> <file>" anyway and it works, +x or no +x.

You can do, but because Linux has a mechanism for launching the correct interpreter which honours the +x bit it's unusual for anything to do this automatically, whereas on Windows associating interpreters with scripting formats is exactly the same as associating editors with document formats.

Amusingly this was changed with PowerShell in that .ps1 files do not have powershell.exe registered to run them when double-clicked. As a result people complain about it and resort to writing a .bat wrapper around the script.

JS files are not executed; the interpreter cscript.exe is executed, the JS file is simply passed as parameter to be read.

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