On Tue, Jul 07, 1998 at 09:54:04AM -0400, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: > On Mon, Jul 06, 1998 at 08:19:36PM -0700, Christopher Barry wrote: > > 2) The "file extension" is only as usefull as you trust it ;) > unlike most DOS applications, it is rather uncommon for an application > in a Unix-like environment to make assumptions based on filenames.
I like the "file" utility for this, for example: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ file * bin: setgid directory CLICK2.WAV: Microsoft RIFF, WAVE audio data, 8 bit, mono 11025 Hz debian: directory debs: setgid directory diary: International language text dsssl: setgid directory funstuff: setgid directory glademm-0.1.3.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, deflated, last modified: Tue Jul 7 14:20:36 1998, max compression, os: Unix libgtkmm_0.9.4-1_i386.deb: current ar archive linux-2.1.106.tar.bz2: bzip2 compressed data, block size = 900k Mail: directory Office40: directory postponed: empty projects: setgid directory spinach_mid: uuencoded or xxencoded text test: setgid directory TODO: ASCII text TODO.books: English text uni: setgid directory xpsw1.zip: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract zip+hp.txt: English text It uses magic codes in the files to determine (or guess ;) the file format and read additional information. It works great. See how it recognizes the *.deb format correctly as an ar-archive, and how it tells me about the *.wav file. It even tells me that I don't have postponed mail at the moment :) It is not every time correct, for example: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ file .Xauthority .Xauthority: X11 SNF font data, MSB first But Xauthority file is only random binary data anyway... Marcus -- "Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
