understanding file type

Selvakumar has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: understanding file type by tomfahle (Priest) on Jun 10, 2009 at 05:57 UTC
Also have a look at File::LibMagic `#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use File::LibMagic ':easy'; my @files = qw( /bin/ls /etc/localtime /etc/timezone /etc/motd ); foreach my $file ( @files ) { print "$file:\n\t", MagicFile( $file ), "\n"; }` [download] which yields /bin/ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for +GNU/Linux 2.6.8, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped /etc/localtime: timezone data /etc/timezone: ASCII text /etc/motd: symbolic link to `/var/run/motd' [download] on my Linux Box.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: understanding file type by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2009 at 05:13 UTC
See Comparing different MIME type checking modules for three modules. By the way, PerlMonks Discussion is for discussions about PerlMonks. I moved your post from there too Seekers of Perl Wisdom where it belongs.	[reply]
Re: understanding file type by Bloodnok (Vicar) on Jun 10, 2009 at 09:09 UTC
You don't say on which platform you're running, but if it's *NIX, then `file(1)` (which uses `/etc/magic`) is your friend - see `man file`. A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: understanding file type by nikosv (Deacon) on Jun 10, 2009 at 08:01 UTC
binary files have a unique identifier embedded into the header of the file.eg a PDF file starts with '%PDF-1.3' use a Hex editor and look at the header of the file, or programmatically read the first few bytes from the header and identify the file format.basically look at the documentation of the format	[reply]