FW: [Scottish] type of files

[Huard, Elise - D C&W Consultant]

OK - the magic number it is then.  I'll have to dig a bit to find out how to
get that, but a very loose inspiration from 'file' should do it ... (my
employer doesn't use GPL alas)

Thanks all for the help,

Elise

----------
From:  Peter Michael Kavanagh [SMTP:Peter.Kavanagh@nsc.com]
<mailto:[SMTP:Peter.Kavanagh@nsc.com]> 
Sent:  28 August 2002 16:29
To:  Huard, Elise - D C&W Consultant
Subject:  [Scottish] type of files

Elise,

Once was the day when all binary file standards used a "magic number" system
where the first 4 bytes of a file could be decoded into four ascii
characters.  These coresponded to the commonly used three or four letter
extention (pcx,jpeg,gds2,aud,wav).  If you open up a common binary file in
vi, chances are the first four chars look familiar.
Then along came the 8.3 filenames and people just used the 3 letter
extension.  Most basic unix systems will read both the magic number and any
extension and judge what the file is.  You can do this with a standard
binary read in C.
Hope that helps.
Peter Kavanagh
(Not on the list, but feel free to fwd)
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