Why does dbase save files with the same name in 3 different extensions(*.mdx, *.dbf, *.dbt)?

Question

I found an old dbase database. Each "table" has 3 files with the same name but different extensions.

Example:

• user.mdx
• user.dft
• user.dbf

Why are these different. I can easily open and use the .dft files. Can I ignore the other ones or will I lose any data with that ?

Answer 1

See details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dbf

The various files for a dBase database are:

• .dbf - the actual data file - contains the table data
• .dbt - the memo file for the database, to hold the long texts
• .mdx - the index file, which contains the index entries