http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=770204


in reply to understanding file type

Also have a look at File::LibMagic

#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use File::LibMagic ':easy'; my @files = qw( /bin/ls /etc/localtime /etc/timezone /etc/motd ); foreach my $file ( @files ) { print "$file:\n\t", MagicFile( $file ), "\n"; }

which yields

/bin/ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for +GNU/Linux 2.6.8, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped /etc/localtime: timezone data /etc/timezone: ASCII text /etc/motd: symbolic link to `/var/run/motd'

on my Linux Box.