Interchange File Format

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Interchange File Format (IFF) is a generic digital container file format originally introduced by Electronic Arts (in cooperation with Commodore) in 1985 to facilitate transfer of data between software produced by different companies.

IFF files do not have any standard filename extension. On many systems that generate IFF files, file extensions are not important because the operating system stores file format metadata separately from the file name. The .iff filename extension is commonly used for the ILBM image file format, which uses the IFF container format.

Resource Interchange File Format is a format developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1991 that is based on IFF, except the byte order has been changed to little-endian to match the x86 microprocessor architecture. Apple's Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is a big-endian audio file format developed from IFF. The TIFF image file format is not related to IFF.