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136

answers:

1
+5  Q: 

Is there a python-equivalent of the unix "file" utility?

I want to have different behavior in a python script, depending on the type of file. I cannot use the filename extension as it may not be present or misleading. I could call the file utility and parse the output, but I would rather use a python builtin for portability.

So is there anything in python that uses heuristics to deduce the type of the file from its contents?

+6  A: 

Probably others as well. "magic" is the magic keyword to search for. ;-)

Alex Brasetvik  2009-12-29 13:51:01
`libmagic` isn't perfect for all files. It looks at the "magic number" in a file header. Text files, such as source code, don't have headers and libmagic has to resort to wild guessing ... it can be very wrong about them.
THC4k  2009-12-29 14:02:54
Such is the danger of all content-sniffing approaches. Often the number of ‘acceptable’ file types is smaller than the list known by libmagic, in which case ad-hoc app-level sniffing can be a better bet, but for the general case there's not much you can do about it.
bobince  2009-12-29 14:12:47
libmagic is what file uses, so it's very, very hard to find a closer match to file.
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams  2009-12-29 16:07:55

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