Small programs could ignore the segmentation and just use plain 16-bit addressing. This allows 8-bit software to be quite easily ported to the 8086. The authors of most DOS implementations took advantage of this by providing an Application Programming Interface very similar to CP/M as well as including the simple ".com" executable file format, identical to CP/M. This was important when the 8086 and MS-DOS were new, because it allowed many existing CP/M (and other) applications to be quickly made available, greatly easing acceptance of the new platform.