file
- determine file type
file [ -bchikLnNprsvz ] [ -f namefile ] [ -F separator ] [ -m magicfiles ] file ... file -C [ -m magicfile ]
version 4.17
Tests each f in an attempt to classify it.
The type output will usually contain one of the words
text
(the file contains only printing
characters and a few common control characters and is probably safe to read on an ASCII terminal),
executable
(the file contains the result of compiling a program in a form understandable to some UNIX kernel or another), or
data
meaning anything else (data is usually 'binary'
or non-printable).
/usr/share/file/magic
or the program itself, preserve these keywords . People depend on knowing that all the readable files
in a directory have the word ''text'' printed. Don't change ''shell
commands text'' to ''shell script''. Note that the file /usr/share/file/magic
is built
mechanically from a large number of small files in the subdirectory Magdir in the source distribution of this program.
The filesystem tests are based on examining the return from a stat(2) system call. The program checks to see if the file is empty, or if it's some sort of special file. Any known
file types appropriate to the system you are running on (sockets, symbolic links, or named
pipes (FIFOs) on those systems that implement them) are intuited if they are defined in the
system header file <sys/stat.h>
.
The magic number tests are used to check for files with data in particular fixed formats. The canonical example of this is a binary executable (compiled program) a.out file, whose format is defined in a.out.h and possibly exec.h in the standard include directory. These files have a 'magic number' stored in a particular place near the beginning of the file that tells the UNIX operating system that the file is a binary executable, and which of several types thereof. The concept of 'magic number' has been applied by extension to data files. Any file with some invariant identifier at a small fixed offset into the file can usually be described in this way. The information identifying these files is read from the compiled magic file /usr/share/file/magic.mgc , or /usr/share/file/magic if the compile file does not exist. In addition file will look in $HOME/.magic.mgc , or $HOME/.magic for magic entries.
If a file does not match any of the entries in the magic file, it is examined to see if it seems to be a text file. ASCII, ISO-8859-x, non-ISO 8-bit extended-ASCII character sets (such as those used on Macintosh and IBM PC systems), UTF-8-encoded Unicode, UTF-16-encoded Unicode, and EBCDIC character sets can be distinguished by the different ranges and sequences of bytes that constitute printable text in each set. If a file passes any of these tests, its character set is reported. ASCII, ISO-8859-x, UTF-8, and extended-ASCII files are iden- tified as ''text'' because they will be mostly readable on nearly any terminal; UTF-16 and EBCDIC are only ''character data'' because, while they contain text, it is text that will require translation before it can be read. In addition, file will attempt to determine other characteristics of text-type files. If the lines of a file are terminated by CR, CRLF, or NEL, instead of the Unix-standard LF, this will be reported. Files that contain embedded escape sequences or overstriking will also be identified.
Once file has determined the character set used in a text-type file, it will attempt to determine in what language the file is written. The language tests look for particular strings (cf names.h) that can appear anywhere in the first few blocks of a file. For exam- ple, the keyword .br indicates that the file is most likely a troff(1) input file, just as the keyword struct indicates a C program. These tests are less reliable than the previous two groups, so they are performed last. The language test routines also test for some mis- cellany (such as tar(1) archives).
Any file that cannot be identified as having been written in any of the character sets listed above is simply said to be ''data''.
OPTIONS
-b |
FILES
Default compiled list of magic numbers /usr/share/file/magic.mgc
Default list of magic numbers /usr/share/file/magic
Default compiled list of magic numbers, used to output mime types when the -i option
is specified.
/usr/share/file/magic.mime.mgc
Default list of magic numbers, used to output mime types when the -i option is specified.
/usr/share/file/magic.mime
ENVIRONMENT The environment variable MAGIC can be used to set the default magic number file name. If that variable is set, then file will not attempt to open $HOME/.magic . file adds ".mime" and/or ".mgc" to the value of this variable as appropriate. The environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT controls (on systems that support symbolic links), if file will attempt to follow symlinks or not. If set, then file follows symlink, otherwise it does not. This is also controlled by the L and h options.
SEE ALSO magic(5) - description of magic file format. strings(1), od(1), hexdump(1) - tools for examining non-textfiles.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE This program is believed to exceed the System V Interface Definition of FILE(CMD), as near as one can determine from the vague language contained therein. Its behaviour is mostly compat- ible with the System V program of the same name. This version knows more magic, however, so it will produce different (albeit more accurate) output in many cases.
The one significant difference between this version and System V is that this version treats any white space as a delimiter, so that spaces in pattern strings must be escaped. For exam- ple, >10 string language impress (imPRESS data) in an existing magic file would have to be changed to >10 string language\ impress (imPRESS data) In addition, in this version, if a pattern string contains a backslash, it must be escaped. For example 0 string \begindata Andrew Toolkit document in an existing magic file would have to be changed to 0 string \\begindata Andrew Toolkit document
SunOS releases 3.2 and later from Sun Microsystems include a file(1) command derived from the System V one, but with some extensions. My version differs from Sun's only in minor ways. It includes the extension of the '&' operator, used as, for example, >16 long&0x7fffffff >0 not stripped
MAGIC DIRECTORY The magic file entries have been collected from various sources, mainly USENET, and con- tributed by various authors. Christos Zoulas (address below) will collect additional or cor- rected magic file entries. A consolidation of magic file entries will be distributed period- ically.
The order of entries in the magic file is significant. Depending on what system you are using, the order that they are put together may be incorrect. If your old file command uses a magic file, keep the old magic file around for comparison purposes (rename it to /usr/share/file/magic.orig).
EXAMPLES $ file file.c file /dev/{wd0a,hda} file.c: C program text file: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped /dev/wd0a: block special (0/0) /dev/hda: block special (3/0) $ file -s /dev/wd0{b,d} /dev/wd0b: data /dev/wd0d: x86 boot sector $ file -s /dev/hda{,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} /dev/hda: x86 boot sector /dev/hda1: Linux/i386 ext2 filesystem /dev/hda2: x86 boot sector /dev/hda3: x86 boot sector, extended partition table /dev/hda4: Linux/i386 ext2 filesystem /dev/hda5: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda6: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda7: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda8: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda9: empty /dev/hda10: empty
$ file -i file.c file /dev/{wd0a,hda} file.c: text/x-c file: application/x-executable, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped /dev/hda: application/x-not-regular-file /dev/wd0a: application/x-not-regular-file
HISTORY There has been a file command in every UNIX since at least Research Version 4 (man page dated November, 1973). The System V version introduced one significant major change: the external list of magic number types. This slowed the program down slightly but made it a lot more flexible.
This program, based on the System V version, was written by Ian Darwin
John Gilmore revised the code extensively, making it better than the first version. Geoff
Collyer found several inadequacies and provided some magic file entries. Contributions by
the '&' operator by Rob McMahon, cudcv@warwick.ac.uk, 1989.
Guy Harris, guy@netapp.com, made many changes from 1993 to the present.
Primary development and maintenance from 1990 to the present by Christos Zoulas (chris-
tos@astron.com).
Altered by Chris Lowth, chris@lowth.com, 2000: Handle the ''-i'' option to output mime type
strings and using an alternative magic file and internal logic.
Altered by Eric Fischer (enf@pobox.com), July, 2000, to identify character codes and attempt
to identify the languages of non-ASCII files.
The list of contributors to the "Magdir" directory (source for the /usr/share/file/magic
file) is too long to include here. You know who you are; thank you.
LEGAL NOTICE
Copyright (c) Ian F. Darwin, Toronto, Canada, 1986-1999. Covered by the standard Berkeley
Software Distribution copyright; see the file LEGAL.NOTICE in the source distribution.
The files tar.h and is_tar.c were written by John Gilmore from his public-domain tar program,
and are not covered by the above license.
BUGS
There must be a better way to automate the construction of the Magic file from all the glop
in magdir. What is it? Better yet, the magic file should be compiled into binary (say,
ndbm(3) or, better yet, fixed-length ASCII strings for use in heterogenous network environ-
ments) for faster startup. Then the program would run as fast as the Version 7 program of
the same name, with the flexibility of the System V version.
File uses several algorithms that favor speed over accuracy, thus it can be misled about the
contents of text files.
The support for text files (primarily for programming languages) is simplistic, inefficient
and requires recompilation to update.
There should be an ''else'' clause to follow a series of continuation lines.
The magic file and keywords should have regular expression support. Their use of ASCII TAB
as a field delimiter is ugly and makes it hard to edit the files, but is entrenched.
It might be advisable to allow upper-case letters in keywords for e.g., troff(1) commands vs
man page macros. Regular expression support would make this easy.
The program doesn't grok FORTRAN. It should be able to figure FORTRAN by seeing some key-
words which appear indented at the start of line. Regular expression support would make this
easy.
The list of keywords in ascmagic probably belongs in the Magic file. This could be done by
using some keyword like '*' for the offset value.
Another optimisation would be to sort the magic file so that we can just run down all the
tests for the first byte, first word, first long, etc, once we have fetched it. Complain
about conflicts in the magic file entries. Make a rule that the magic entries sort based on
file offset rather than position within the magic file?
The program should provide a way to give an estimate of ''how good'' a guess is. We end up
removing guesses (e.g. ''From '' as first 5 chars of file) because they are not as good as
other guesses (e.g. ''Newsgroups:'' versus ''Return-Path:''). Still, if the others don't pan
out, it should be possible to use the first guess.
This program is slower than some vendors' file commands. The new support for multiple character codes makes it even slower.
This manual page, and particularly this section, is too long.
AVAILABILITY
You can obtain the original author's latest version by anonymous FTP on ftp.astron.com in the
directory /pub/file/file-X.YZ.tar.gz
Copyright but distributable FILE(1)