------------------------------------------------------------------------ file determine type of file ------------------------------------------------------------------------ $ file infile #will give details of infile The tool "file" runs three tests (1) filesystem tests (can the file be printed or not), (2) magic test (the first few bytes will determine the file type; apropos magic), (3) languge tests (ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 or other). If these tests fail then the file is "data". -b brief -F change separator from default of ":" -z uncompress the file before running tests