Python version of perl's "if (-T ..)" and "if (-B ...)"?

[Ben Finney]

aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:

> In article <mailman.2434.1265983307.28905.python-list at python.org>,
> Lloyd Zusman  <ljz at asfast.com> wrote:
> >if (-T $filename) { print "file contains 'text' characters\n"; }
> >if (-B $filename) { print "file contains 'binary' characters\n"; }
>
> Assuming you're on a Unix-like system or can install Cygwin, the
> standard response is to use the "file" command. It's *much* more
> sophisticated.

Indeed, the ‘file’ command is an expected (though not standard) part of
most Unix systems, and its use frees us from the lies of filenames about
their contents.

The sophistication comes from an extensive database of heuristics —
filesystem attributes, “magic” content signatures, and parsing — that
are together known as the “magic database”. This database is maintained
along with the ‘file’ program, and made accessible through a C library
from the same code base called ‘magic’.

So, you don't actually need to use the ‘file’ command to access this
sophistication. Just about every program on a GNU system that wants to
display file types, such as the graphical file manager, will query the
‘magic’ library directly to get the file type.

The ‘file’ code base has for a while now also included a Python
interface to this library, importable as the module name ‘magic’.
Unfortunately it isn't registered at PyPI as far as I can tell. (There
are several project using the name “magic” that implement something
similar, but they are nowhere near as sophisticated.)

On a Debian GNU/Linux system, you can install the ‘python-magic’ package
to get this installed. Otherwise, you can build it from the ‘file’ code
base <URL:http://www.darwinsys.com/file/>.

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Ben Finney