chickadee » magic » identify

identify returns a textual description of the file indicated by object, or the contents of (current-input-port) if no object is specified.

If object is given, it may be any of the following types, with identify returning a description of:

• blob: the contents of the blob.
• string: the contents of the file indicated by the given filename.
• integer: the contents of that file descriptor.
• input-port: the contents of the port. This port must be backed by a file descriptor; if not, an error of type (exn type) will be raised.

If flags is given, it should be a symbol or list of symbols indicating the type of description to return. These correspond to the MAGIC_* constants in magic.h, and can be any combination of the following (though not all combinations make sense):

• apple
• compress
• device
• mime
• mime-encoding encoding
• mime-type type
• no-apptype
• no-cdf
• no-compress
• no-elf
• no-encoding
• no-soft
• no-tar
• no-text
• no-tokens
• none
• preserve-atime
• raw
• symlink

For example:

(identify "/usr/include/magic.h") ; => "C source, ASCII text"
(identify "/usr/include/magic.h" 'mime) ; => "text/x-c; charset=us-ascii"
(identify "/usr/include/magic.h" '(preserve-atime no-text)) ; => "data"

An unrecognized flag will raise an exception of type (exn magic).