Home - News ( United States | United Kingdom | Italy | Germany ) - Football scores

Showing content from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/file-command-in-linux-with-examples/ below:

file command in Linux with examples

Last Updated : 11 Jul, 2025

The 'file' command in Linux is a vital utility for determining the type of a file. It identifies file types by examining their content rather than their file extensions, making it an indispensable tool for users who work with various file formats. The file type can be displayed in a human-readable format (e.g., ASCII text) or as a MIME type (e.g., 'text/plain; charset=us-ascii'). The file command tests each argument provided to categorize it accurately.

It has three sets of tests as follows:

• filesystem test: This test is based on the result which returns from a 'stat' system call. The program verifies that if the file is empty, or if it's some sort of special file. This test causes the file type to be printed.
• magic test: These tests are used to check for files with data in particular fixed formats.
• language test: This test search for particular strings which can appear anywhere in the first few blocks of a file.

file [option] [filename]

You can use the 'file' command with various files to determine their types:

file email.py           # Displays type of 'email.py'
file name.jpeg          # Displays type of 'name.jpeg'
file Invoice.pdf        # Displays type of 'Invoice.pdf'
file exam.ods           # Displays type of 'exam.ods'
file videosong.mp4      # Displays type of 'videosong.mp4'

RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue

Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo

HTML: 3.2 | Encoding: UTF-8 | Version: 0.7.4