FILE(1)FILE(1)
NAME
file – determine file type
SYNOPSIS
file
[
-m
]
[
file
...
]
DESCRIPTION
File
performs a series of tests on its argument
files
in an attempt to classify their contents by language or purpose.
If no arguments are given, the classification is performed
on standard input.
If the
-m
flag is given,
file
outputs an
appropriate MIME
Content-Type
specification describing the
type
and
subtype
of each file.
The file types it looks for include
directory,
device file,
zero-filled file,
empty file,
Plan 9 executable,
PAC audio file,
cpio
archive,
tex
dvi
file,
archive symbol table,
archive,
rc
script,
sh
script,
PostScript,
troff
output file for various devices,
mail box,
GIF,
FAX,
object code,
C and Alef source,
assembler source,
compressed files,
encrypted file,
English text,
compressed image,
image,
subfont,
and
font.
If a file has no apparent format,
file
looks at the character set it uses to classify it according to
ASCII\c
,
extended
ASCII\c
, Latin
ASCII\c
, or
UTF
holding one or more of the following blocks of the Unicode Standard:
Extended Latin,
Greek,
Cyrillic,
Armenian,
Hebrew,
Arabic,
Devanagari,
Bengali,
Gurmukhi,
Gujarati,
Oriya,
Tamil,
Telugu,
Kannada,
Malayalam,
Thai,
Lao,
Tibetan,
Georgian,
Japanese,
Chinese,
or Korean.
If all else fails,
file
decides its input is
binary.
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/file.c
BUGS
It can make mistakes.