--apple
Causes the file command to output the file type and creator
code as used by older MacOS versions. The code consists of
eight letters, the first describing the file type, the
latter the creator. This option works properly only for
file formats that have the apple-style output defined.
-b, --brief
Do not prepend filenames to output lines (brief mode).
-C, --compile
Write a magic.mgc output file that contains a pre-parsed
version of the magic file or directory.
-c, --checking-printout
Cause a checking printout of the parsed form of the magic
file. This is usually used in conjunction with the -m
option to debug a new magic file before installing it.
-d Prints internal debugging information to stderr.
-E On filesystem errors (file not found etc), instead of
handling the error as regular output as POSIX mandates and
keep going, issue an error message and exit.
-e, --exclude testname
Exclude the test named in testname from the list of tests
made to determine the file type. Valid test names are:
apptype EMX application type (only on EMX).
ascii Various types of text files (this test will try
to guess the text encoding, irrespective of the
setting of the 'encoding' option).
encoding Different text encodings for soft magic tests.
tokens Ignored for backwards compatibility.
cdf Prints details of Compound Document Files.
compress Checks for, and looks inside, compressed files.
csv Checks Comma Separated Value files.
elf Prints ELF file details, provided soft magic
tests are enabled and the elf magic is found.
json Examines JSON (RFC-7159) files by parsing them
for compliance.
soft Consults magic files.
tar Examines tar files by verifying the checksum of
the 512 byte tar header. Excluding this test can
provide more detailed content description by
using the soft magic method.
text A synonym for 'ascii'.
--exclude-quiet
Like --exclude but ignore tests that file does not know
about. This is intended for compatibility with older
versions of file.
--extension
Print a slash-separated list of valid extensions for the
file type found.
-F, --separator separator
Use the specified string as the separator between the
filename and the file result returned. Defaults to ':'.
-f, --files-from namefile
Read the names of the files to be examined from namefile
(one per line) before the argument list. Either namefile
or at least one filename argument must be present; to test
the standard input, use '-' as a filename argument. Please
note that namefile is unwrapped and the enclosed filenames
are processed when this option is encountered and before
any further options processing is done. This allows one to
process multiple lists of files with different command line
arguments on the same file invocation. Thus if you want to
set the delimiter, you need to do it before you specify the
list of files, like: '-F @ -f namefile', instead of: '-f
namefile -F @'.
-h, --no-dereference
This option causes symlinks not to be followed (on systems
that support symbolic links). This is the default if the
environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is not defined.
-i, --mime
Causes the file command to output mime type strings rather
than the more traditional human readable ones. Thus it may
say 'text/plain; charset=us-ascii' rather than 'ASCII
text'.
--mime-type, --mime-encoding
Like -i, but print only the specified element(s).
-k, --keep-going
Don't stop at the first match, keep going. Subsequent
matches will be have the string '\012- ' prepended. (If
you want a newline, see the -r option.) The magic pattern
with the highest strength (see the -l option) comes first.
-l, --list
Shows a list of patterns and their strength sorted
descending by magic(4) strength which is used for the
matching (see also the -k option).
-L, --dereference
This option causes symlinks to be followed, as the like-
named option in ls(1) (on systems that support symbolic
links). This is the default if the environment variable
POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined.
-m, --magic-file magicfiles
Specify an alternate list of files and directories
containing magic. This can be a single item, or a colon-
separated list. If a compiled magic file is found
alongside a file or directory, it will be used instead.
-N, --no-pad
Don't pad filenames so that they align in the output.
-n, --no-buffer
Force stdout to be flushed after checking each file. This
is only useful if checking a list of files. It is intended
to be used by programs that want filetype output from a
pipe.
-p, --preserve-date
On systems that support utime(3) or utimes(2), attempt to
preserve the access time of files analyzed, to pretend that
file never read them.
-P, --parameter name=value
Set various parameter limits.
Name Default Explanation
bytes 1048576 max number of bytes to read
from
file
elf_notes 256 max ELF notes processed
elf_phnum 2048 max ELF program sections
processed
elf_shnum 32768 max ELF sections processed
encoding 65536 max number of bytes to scan
for
encoding
evaluation
indir 50 recursion limit for indirect
magic
name 50 use count limit for name/use
magic
regex 8192 length limit for regex
searches
-r, --raw
Don't translate unprintable characters to \ooo. Normally
file translates unprintable characters to their octal
representation.
-s, --special-files
Normally, file only attempts to read and determine the type
of argument files which stat(2) reports are ordinary files.
This prevents problems, because reading special files may
have peculiar consequences. Specifying the -s option
causes file to also read argument files which are block or
character special files. This is useful for determining
the filesystem types of the data in raw disk partitions,
which are block special files. This option also causes
file to disregard the file size as reported by stat(2)
since on some systems it reports a zero size for raw disk
partitions.
-S, --no-sandbox
On systems where libseccomp
(https://github.com/seccomp/libseccomp ) is available, the
-S option disables sandboxing which is enabled by default.
This option is needed for file to execute external
decompressing programs, i.e. when the -z option is
specified and the built-in decompressors are not available.
On systems where sandboxing is not available, this option
has no effect.
-v, --version
Print the version of the program and exit.
-z, --uncompress
Try to look inside compressed files.
-Z, --uncompress-noreport
Try to look inside compressed files, but report information
about the contents only not the compression.
-0, --print0
Output a null character '\0' after the end of the filename.
Nice to cut(1) the output. This does not affect the
separator, which is still printed.
If this option is repeated more than once, then file prints
just the filename followed by a NUL followed by the
description (or ERROR: text) followed by a second NUL for
each entry.
--help Print a help message and exit.
