Identifying files in the terminal

Mar 06, '01 11:28:40PM

Contributed by: robg

Ever visited one of those sites that downloads a file with a Javascript or some other active method, and you wind up with a file named "download.asp" or "file.asp"? Ever wonder how to figure out what it is, without trying to drag-and-drop it on everything?

In the terminal, it's quite simple - you can use the file command, like this:

[xperiment:~/Documents/downloads] berto% file download.php
download.php: gzip compressed data, deflated,
last modified: Fri Feb 23 18:17:34 2001, os: Unix
(Line break added to shorten the line width!) The file command looks at the file, and compares it to a database of types, and then gives you its best guess at the filetype.

In this real-world example, I couldn't figure out how to expand the file ... the file output lets me know I need to use gzip! For full information on file, make sure you check out the manual pages by typing man file in the terminal window.

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