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"PE" in this context stands for "Portable Executable". (For those not in the know, such as myself.)

Thank you - I was wondering what a "Private Equity" file might look like...

I would say an excel spreadsheet :)

The way a PE file is defined is interesting. They managed to cram a completely different file format into the DOS 'MZ' format. Including the NE and LE formats. I think the NE one had a bunch of sub targets (OS/2, win32s, etc).

https://wiki.osdev.org/PE https://wiki.osdev.org/NE

It is quite the nesting doll of executable formats. If I remember correctly PE also holds .NET in some way as another sub format.

There's a clue in the title.

It's possible that I missed that, but I believe the HN poster silently updated the title. The word "executable" does not appear anywhere in the HTML of the target page.

(sigh at how acronyms are the source for endless insider snark.)

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