Detecting type of file in a program

[Paul De Bra]

In article <192 at henry.ece.utexas.edu> po at volta.ece.utexas.edu () writes:
>In my program, I am using opendir() to read in the names of 
>text files from a directory.
>How can I tell whether a file is text or an object file ?
>Is there a better way than using :
>	system("file filename > /tmp/tempfile")

The only way is to look at the contents of the file, which is what the
utility "file" does too.
So read a number of bytes from the file, and then guess, depending on what
you see.

Paul.
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