Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!rutgers!att!ulysses!andante!alice!debra
From: debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Detecting type of file in a program
Message-ID: <8868@alice.UUCP>
Date: 5 Feb 89 00:04:15 GMT
References: <192@henry.ece.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: debra@alice.UUCP ()
Organization: AT&T, Bell Labs
Lines: 17

In article <192@henry.ece.utexas.edu> po@volta.ece.utexas.edu () writes:
>In my program, I am using opendir() to read in the names of 
>text files from a directory.
>How can I tell whether a file is text or an object file ?
>Is there a better way than using :
>	system("file filename > /tmp/tempfile")

The only way is to look at the contents of the file, which is what the
utility "file" does too.
So read a number of bytes from the file, and then guess, depending on what
you see.

Paul.
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