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.\" Copyright (c) Ian F. Darwin 1986-1995.
.\" Software written by Ian F. Darwin and others;
.\" maintained 1995-present by Christos Zoulas and others.
.\"
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.Dd $Mdocdate: January 17 2013 $
.Dt FILE 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm file
.Nd determine file type
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Bk -words
.Op Fl 0bCcehikLNnprsvz
.Op Fl -help
.Op Fl -mime-encoding
.Op Fl -mime-type
.Op Fl F Ar separator
.Op Fl f Ar namefile
.Op Fl m Ar magicfiles
.Ar file
.Ek
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility 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.
.Pp
The type printed will usually contain one of the words
.Em text
(the file contains only
printing characters and a few common control
characters and is probably safe to read on an
ASCII terminal),
.Em executable
(the file contains the result of compiling a program
in a form understandable to some
.Ux
kernel or another),
or
.Em data
meaning anything else (data is usually
.Dq binary
or non-printable).
Exceptions are well-known file formats (core files, tar archives)
that are known to contain binary data.
When modifying magic files or the program itself, make sure to
.Em preserve these keywords .
Users depend on knowing that all the readable files in a directory
have the word
.Dq text
printed.
Don't do as Berkeley did and change
.Dq shell commands text
to
.Dq shell script .
.Pp
The filesystem tests are based on examining the return from a
.Xr 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,
such as sockets, symbolic links, and named pipes (FIFOs),
are intuited if they are defined in
the system header file
.Aq Pa sys/stat.h .
.Pp
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
.Aq Pa elf.h ,
.Aq Pa a.out.h ,
and possibly
.Aq Pa exec.h
in the standard include directory.
These files have a
.Dq magic number
stored in a particular place
near the beginning of the file that tells the
.Ux
operating system
that the file is a binary executable, and which of several types thereof.
The concept of a
.Dq 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 magic file
.Pa /etc/magic .
In addition, if
.Pa $HOME/.magic.mgc
or
.Pa $HOME/.magic
exists, it will be used in preference to the system magic files.
.Pp
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
.Dq text
because they will be mostly readable on nearly any terminal;
UTF-16 and EBCDIC are only
.Dq character data
because, while
they contain text, it is text that will require translation
before it can be read.
In addition,
.Nm
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.
.Pp
Once
.Nm
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.\&
.Aq Pa names.h )
that can appear anywhere in the first few blocks of a file.
For example, the keyword
.Em .br
indicates that the file is most likely a
troff input file, just as the keyword
.Em 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 miscellany
(such as
.Xr tar 1
archives).
.Pp
Any file that cannot be identified as having been written
in any of the character sets listed above is simply said to be
.Dq data .
.Sh OPTIONS
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl 0 , -print0
Output a null character
.Sq \e0
after the end of the filename.
Nice to
.Xr cut 1
the output.
This does not affect the separator which is still printed.
.It Fl b , -brief
Do not prepend filenames to output lines (brief mode).
.It Fl C , -compile
Write a
.Pa magic.mgc
output file that contains a pre-parsed version of the magic file or directory.
.It Fl c , -checking-printout
Cause a checking printout of the parsed form of the magic file.
This is usually used in conjunction with the
.Fl m
flag to debug a new magic file before installing it.
.It Fl e , -exclude Ar testname
Exclude the test named in
.Ar testname
from the list of tests made to determine the file type.
Valid test names are:
.Bl -tag -width compress
.It apptype
Check for
.Dv EMX
application type (only on EMX).
.It ascii
Check for various types of ASCII files.
.It compress
Don't look for, or inside, compressed files.
.It elf
Don't print elf details.
.It fortran
Don't look for fortran sequences inside ASCII files.
.It soft
Don't consult magic files.
.It tar
Don't examine tar files.
.It token
Don't look for known tokens inside ASCII files.
.It troff
Don't look for troff sequences inside ASCII files.
.El
.It Fl F , -separator Ar separator
Use the specified string as the separator between the filename and the
file result returned.
Defaults to
.Sq \&: .
.It Fl f , -files-from Ar namefile
Read the names of the files to be examined from
.Ar namefile
(one per line)
before the argument list.
Either
.Ar namefile
or at least one filename argument must be present;
to test the standard input, use
.Sq -
as a filename argument.
.It Fl h , -no-dereference
Causes symlinks not to be followed.
This is the default if the environment variable
.Dv POSIXLY_CORRECT
is not defined.
.It Fl -help
Print a help message and exit.
.It Fl i , -mime
Causes the file command to output mime type strings rather than the more
traditional human readable ones.
Thus it may say
.Dq text/plain charset=us-ascii
rather than
.Dq ASCII text .
In order for this option to work,
.Nm
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
.Dq magic
file.
See also
.Sx FILES ,
below.
.It Fl -mime-encoding , -mime-type
Like
.Fl i ,
but print only the specified element(s).
.It Fl k , -keep-going
Don't stop at the first match, keep going.
Subsequent matches will have the string
.Dq "\[rs]012\- "
prepended.
(If a newline is required, see the
.Fl r
option.)
.It Fl L , -dereference
Causes symlinks to be followed;
analogous to the option of the same name in
.Xr ls 1 .
This is the default if the environment variable
.Dv POSIXLY_CORRECT
is defined.
.It Fl m , -magic-file Ar 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.
.It Fl N , -no-pad
Don't pad filenames so that they align in the output.
.It Fl 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.
.It Fl p , -preserve-date
On systems that support
.Xr utime 3
or
.Xr utimes 2 ,
attempt to preserve the access time of files analyzed, to pretend that
.Nm
never read them.
.It Fl r , -raw
Don't translate unprintable characters to \eooo.
Normally
.Nm
translates unprintable characters to their octal representation.
.It Fl s , -special-files
Normally,
.Nm
only attempts to read and determine the type of argument files which
.Xr stat 2
reports are ordinary files.
This prevents problems, because reading special files may have peculiar
consequences.
Specifying the
.Fl s
option causes
.Nm
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
.Nm
to disregard the file size as reported by
.Xr stat 2
since on some systems it reports a zero size for raw disk partitions.
.It Fl v , -version
Print the version of the program and exit.
.It Fl z , -uncompress
Try to look inside compressed files.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable
.Dv MAGIC
can be used to set the default magic file name.
If that variable is set, then
.Nm
will not attempt to open
.Pa $HOME/.magic .
.Nm
adds
.Dq .mgc
to the value of this variable as appropriate.
The environment variable
.Dv POSIXLY_CORRECT
controls whether
.Nm
will attempt to follow symlinks or not.
If set, then
.Nm
follows symlinks; otherwise it does not.
This is also controlled by the
.Fl L
and
.Fl h
options.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/magic -compact
.It Pa /etc/magic
default list of magic numbers
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std file
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr hexdump 1 ,
.Xr od 1 ,
.Xr strings 1 ,
.Xr magic 5
.Sh 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 produce
different (albeit more accurate) output in many cases.
.\" URL: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/file.html
.Pp
The one significant difference
between this version and System V
is that this version treats any whitespace
as a delimiter, so that spaces in pattern strings must be escaped.
For example,
.Bd -literal -offset indent
\*(Gt10	string	language impress\ 	(imPRESS data)
.Ed
.Pp
in an existing magic file would have to be changed to
.Bd -literal -offset indent
\*(Gt10	string	language\e impress	(imPRESS data)
.Ed
.Pp
In addition, in this version, if a pattern string contains a backslash,
it must be escaped.
For example
.Bd -literal -offset indent
0	string		\ebegindata	Andrew Toolkit document
.Ed
.Pp
in an existing magic file would have to be changed to
.Bd -literal -offset indent
0	string		\e\ebegindata	Andrew Toolkit document
.Ed
.Pp
SunOS releases 3.2 and later from Sun Microsystems include a
.Nm
command derived from the System V one, but with some extensions.
This version differs from Sun's only in minor ways.
It includes the extension of the
.Sq &
operator, used as,
for example,
.Bd -literal -offset indent
\*(Gt16	long&0x7fffffff	\*(Gt0		not stripped
.Ed
.Sh HISTORY
There has been a
.Nm
command in every
.Ux
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 types.
This slowed the program down slightly but made it a lot more flexible.
.Pp
This program, based on the System V version,
was written by Ian Darwin
without looking at anybody else's source code.
.Pp
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, 1989.
.Pp
Guy Harris, made many changes from 1993 to the present.
.Pp
Primary development and maintenance from 1990 to the present by
Christos Zoulas.
.Pp
Altered by Chris Lowth, 2000:
Handle the
.Fl i
option to output mime type strings, using an alternative
magic file and internal logic.
.Pp
Altered by Eric Fischer, July, 2000,
to identify character codes and attempt to identify the languages
of non-ASCII files.
.Pp
Altered by Reuben Thomas, 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.
.Pp
The list of contributors to the
.Dq magic
directory (magic files)
is too long to include here.
You know who you are; thank you.
Many contributors are listed in the source files.
.Sh BUGS
There must be a better way to automate the construction of the Magic
file from all the glop in Magdir.
What is it?
.Pp
.Nm
uses several algorithms that favor speed over accuracy,
thus it can be misled about the contents of
text
files.
.Pp
The support for text files (primarily for programming languages)
is simplistic, inefficient and requires recompilation to update.
.Pp
The list of keywords in
.Pa ascmagic
probably belongs in the Magic file.
This could be done by using some keyword like
.Sq *
for the offset value.
.Pp
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?
.Pp
The program should provide a way to give an estimate
of
.Dq how good
a guess is.
We end up removing guesses (e.g.
.Dq From\
as first 5 chars of file) because
they are not as good as other guesses (e.g.\&
.Dq Newsgroups:
versus
.Dq Return-Path: ) .
Still, if the others don't pan out, it should be possible to use the
first guess.
.Pp
This manual page, and particularly this section, is too long.