Well, it's been a total failure

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.vi4kyub1eav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:16:20 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
>>
>> Yea, but my question was more "how in the hell would it know the mime 
>> type
>> of a file in the first place?" It's obviously not stored in the filename,
>> and 99.9% is the time it's not stored in the file's data either.
>
> Most binary file formats are designed to be detectable using a "magic 
> number" that's found at the front of the file.  This magic number allows 
> programs to easily determine the file type.
>
> So yeah, it is stored in the file's data :)
>

Yea, I know, but I was thinking more about text formats (and the rare binary 
formats that don't have that). A lot of text-based formats out there don't 
use shebang syntax. And a lot of them are just small variations on each 
other (at least from a type-detection standpoint).

>> Since then, someone mentioned it typically analyses the content of the 
>> file
>> and infers the mime type based on that. That's news to me. It would seem
>> limited and error-prone though, so I have a hard time believing it 
>> doesn't
>> suppliment that content-analysis with extension-checking in many cases.
>
> I think it's a combination of many things.  Try the Linux 'file' command 
> to see how it detects all different types of files.
>

Yea, that makes sence. Never knew that before though, I just assumed it was 
just extensions and shebang syntax.