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WAD
,→Header: note about signature being largely meaningless
!Position !! Length !! Name !! Description
|-
|0x00 || 4 || identification || The [[Wikipedia:ASCII|ASCII]] characters "IWAD" or "PWAD". Defines whether the WAD is an [[IWAD]] or a [[PWAD]].
|-
|0x04 || 4 || numlumps
|}
All integers are 4 bytes long in [[Wikipedia:x86|x86]]-style [[Wikipedia:Endianness|little-endian]] order. Their values can never exceed 2<sup>31</sup>-1, since Doom reads them as [[Wikipedia:Signedness|signed]] ints. For some ports based on the [[Atari Jaguar]] code (Playstation derived ports being the notable exception), big-endian order is used instead.
The IWAD or PWAD signature is meant to define whether the file is an [[IWAD]] or a [[PWAD]], however this is not actually checked by the engine. Loading an IWAD as a PWAD is possible, and inversely loading a PWAD as an IWAD is also possible. For example, [[CHEX.WAD]] and [[TNT.WAD]] have a PWAD signature despite serving as IWAD.
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