Another alternative is to use the Windows ‘mklink’ command line utility and create a hardlink to the file, assuming an NTFS formatted disk. Mklink will complain if the target disk is not using the NTFS format.
> mklink /h file.json.txt file.json
There will only be one file using storage space on the disk, but two ways of accessing the contents (be careful if both are opened at the same time; Notepad++ will gladly have both views open at the same time and may warn about changes made using the the other view).
I use the ‘added’ .txt extension to assist the OS in keeping both views together when using name listings, e.g. “dir”. The Explorer preview pane will show the contents as text (even if the original file isn’t text, e.g., .pdf or .jpg). The extra extension also assists me in remembering which is the real or base file and which is the alternate view I created to get around Windows obsession with extension based file format determination.
The file will persist (continue to use disk space) until both names are deleted, either from the command line or in Explorer.
Not all disk space applications understand ‘hardlinks’ and will incorrectly show both files using disk space.