DescentBB

Can I open a "dat" file without the program it was created by?

Yes you can. Could you make sense of it? Probably not.

Never mind that there are literally dozens of different types of ".dat" files out there and the vast majority of them are gibberish outside of the program that created them.

Try Notepad

Concurring with Krom, they tend to be files in any number of usually proprietary formats, and used for any number of things - the only thing they tend to have in common is that they store some kind of data. Which tells you that they are probably not executable and ... that's about it.

The only thing that can consistently Open Dat File and save it without making it unreadable to the original application is a hex editor.

If you have an OS X or Linux box sitting around, you could try the `file' command and see if it outputs anything interesting about the file type.

Ten four, thanks.