Quick links About file Syntax Examples Related commands Linux / Unix main page About file Tells you if the object you are looking at is a file or if it is a directory. Syntax file [-c] [-h] [-m mfile] [-f ffile] names
| -c | Check the magic file for format errors. For reasons of efficiency, this validation is normally not carried out. |
| -h | Do not follow symbolic links. |
| -m mfile | Use mfile as an alternate magic file. |
| -f ffile | ffile contains a list of the files to be examined. |
| names | Specifies the directories of files that you want the information about. |
Examples file * Below is an example of what may appear when running file with a wildcard for all files. shutdown.htm: HTML document text si.htm: HTML document text side0.gif: GIF image data, version 89a, 107 x 18 robots.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators routehlp.htm: HTML document text rss: setgid directory file *.txt Below is an example of what may appear when running the above example; running the file command listing any file ending with .txt. form.txt: news or mail text friend.txt: news or mail text ihave.txt: news or mail text index.txt: ASCII Java program text, with very long lines, with CRLF line terminators jargon.txt: news or mail text mad.txt: news or mail text more.txt: news or mail text news.txt: Non-ISO extended-ASCII C program text, with very long lines, with CRLF line terminators newsdata.txt: Non-ISO extended-ASCII English text, with very long
lines, with CRLF line terminators qad.txt: news or mail text refrence.txt: news or mail text robots.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators stopwords.txt: ASCII English text, with CRLF line terminators submit.txt: news or mail text wm.txt: news or mail text yhelp.txt: news or mail text Related commands ls wc |