NAME
file - determine file type
SYNOPSIS
file [-bchikLNnprsvz0] [--apple] [--mime-encoding] [--mime-type]
[-e testname] [-F separator] [-f namefile] [-m magicfiles] file ...
file -C [-m magicfiles]
file [--help]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents version 5.04 of the file command.
file tests each argument in an attempt to classify it. There are three
sets of tests, performed in this order: filesystem tests, magic tests,
and language tests. The first test that succeeds causes the file type to
be printed.
The type printed 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 con-
tains 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). Exceptions are well-known file formats (core
files, tar archives) that are known to contain binary data. When modify-
ing magic files or the program itself, make sure to preserve these
keywords. Users depend on knowing that all the readable files in a
directory have the word ‘text’ printed. Don’t do as Berkeley did and
change ‘shell commands text’ to ‘shell script’.
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 sys-
tem 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
The magic 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 #include <a.out.h>
and possibly #include <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 a ‘magic’ 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/misc/magic.mgc, or the files in the directory
/usr/share/misc/magic if the compiled file does not exist. In addition,
if $HOME/.magic.mgc or $HOME/.magic exists, it will be used in preference
to the system magic files. If /etc/magic exists, it will be used
together with other magic files.
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 identified 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 lan-
guage tests look for particular strings (cf. #include <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 per-
formed last. The language test routines also test for some miscellany
(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, --brief
Do not prepend filenames to output lines (brief mode).
-C, --compile
Write a magic.mgc output file that contains a pre-parsed version
of the magic file or directory.
-c, --checking-printout
Cause a checking printout of the parsed form of the magic file.
This is usually used in conjunction with the -m flag to debug a
new magic file before installing it.
-e, --exclude testname
Exclude the test named in testname from the list of tests made to
determine the file type. Valid test names are:
apptype EMX application type (only on EMX).
text Various types of text files (this test will try to
guess the text encoding, irrespective of the setting of
the ‘encoding’ option).
encoding Different text encodings for soft magic tests.
tokens Looks for known tokens inside text files.
cdf Prints details of Compound Document Files.
compress Checks for, and looks inside, compressed files.
elf Prints ELF file details.
soft Consults magic files.
tar Examines tar files.
-F, --separator separator
Use the specified string as the separator between the filename
and the file result returned. Defaults to ‘:’.
-f, --files-from namefile
Read the names of the files to be examined from namefile (one per
line) before the argument list. Either namefile or at least one
filename argument must be present; to test the standard input,
use ‘-’ as a filename argument.
-h, --no-dereference
option causes symlinks not to be followed (on systems that sup-
port symbolic links). This is the default if the environment
variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is not defined.
-i, --mime
Causes the file command to output mime type strings rather than
the more traditional human readable ones. Thus it may say
‘text/plain; charset=us-ascii’ rather than ‘ASCII text’. In
order for this option to work, file changes the way it handles
files recognized by the command itself (such as many of the text
file types, directories etc), and makes use of an alternative
‘magic’ file. (See the FILES section, below).
--mime-type, --mime-encoding
Like -i, but print only the specified element(s).
-k, --keep-going
Don’t stop at the first match, keep going. Subsequent matches
will be have the string ‘\012- ’ prepended. (If you want a new-
line, see the ‘-r’ option.)
-L, --dereference
option causes symlinks to be followed, as the like-named option
in ls(1) (on systems that support symbolic links). This is the
default if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined.
-m, --magic-file magicfiles
Specify an alternate list of files and directories containing
magic. This can be a single item, or a colon-separated list. If
a compiled magic file is found alongside a file or directory, it
will be used instead.
-N, --no-pad
Don’t pad filenames so that they align in the output.
-n, --no-buffer
Force stdout to be flushed after checking each file. This is
only useful if checking a list of files. It is intended to be
used by programs that want filetype output from a pipe.
-p, --preserve-date
On systems that support utime(2) or utimes(2), attempt to pre-
serve the access time of files analyzed, to pretend that file
never read them.
-r, --raw
Don’t translate unprintable characters to \ooo. Normally file
translates unprintable characters to their octal representation.
-s, --special-files
Normally, file only attempts to read and determine the type of
argument files which stat(2) reports are ordinary files. This
prevents problems, because reading special files may have pecu-
liar consequences. Specifying the -s option causes file to also
read argument files which are block or character special files.
This is useful for determining the filesystem types of the data
in raw disk partitions, which are block special files. This
option also causes file to disregard the file size as reported by
stat(2) since on some systems it reports a zero size for raw disk
partitions.
-v, --version
Print the version of the program and exit.
-z, --uncompress
Try to look inside compressed files.
-0, --print0
Output a null character ‘\0’ after the end of the filename. Nice
to cut(1) the output. This does not affect the separator which is
still printed.
--help Print a help message and exit.
FILES
/usr/share/misc/magic.mgc Default compiled list of magic.
/usr/share/misc/magic Directory containing default magic files.
ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable MAGIC can be used to set the default magic file
name. If that variable is set, then file will not attempt to open
$HOME/.magic. file adds ‘.mgc’ to the value of this variable as appro-
priate. The environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT controls (on systems
that support symbolic links), whether file will attempt to follow sym-
links 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), strings(1), od(1), hexdump(1,) file(1posix)
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 behavior is mostly compatible with the System V program of
the same name. This version knows more magic, however, so it will pro-
duce 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 example,
>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 command
derived from the System V one, but with some extensions. My version dif-
fers 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 contributed by various authors. Christos Zoulas (address
below) will collect additional or corrected magic file entries. A con-
solidation of magic file entries will be distributed periodically.
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 incor-
rect. If your old file command uses a magic file, keep the old magic
file around for comparison purposes (rename it to
/usr/share/misc/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
/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 intro-
duced one significant major change: the external list of magic 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
<ian@darwinsys.com> without looking at anybody else’s source code.
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 McMa-
hon, 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 (christos@astron.com).
Altered by Chris Lowth, chris@lowth.com, 2000: Handle the -i option to
output mime type strings, using an alternative magic file and internal
logic.
Altered by Eric Fischer (enf@pobox.com), July, 2000, to identify charac-
ter codes and attempt to identify the languages of non-ASCII files.
Altered by Reuben Thomas (rrt@sc3d.org), 2007 to 2008, to improve MIME
support and merge MIME and non-MIME magic, support directories as well as
files of magic, apply many bug fixes and improve the build system.
The list of contributors to the ‘magic’ directory (magic files) is too
long to include here. You know who you are; thank you. Many contribu-
tors are listed in the source files.
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 pub-
lic-domain tar(1) 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?
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 sim-
plistic, inefficient and requires recompilation to update.
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.
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. ‘Fromas 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 manual page, and particularly this section, is too long.
RETURN CODE
file returns 0 on success, and non-zero on error.
If the file named by the file operand does not exist, cannot be read, or
the type of the file named by the file operand cannot be determined, this
is not be considered an error that affects the exit status.
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
BSD October 9, 2008 BSD
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