From: James Masters <james.d.masters@...>
Date: 2009-09-19T11:15:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Determining if a file is binary or text

On Sep 18, 5:12 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> Basically, stop and think what you *mean* by "binary or text".  Once you've
> articulated that more clearly, you may well have a much better notion of what
> you mean.

How about a file that contains any single byte character (0-255) that
you cannot find a key for on a standard US keyboard (English)?  The
[:print:] regular expression character set comprises the range of
characters 32-126, which is what I believe that I need, but I wanted
to see if there are better ways to accomplish this.

Basically I'm trying to search for the presence of a header in source
code files (which may have various extensions or no extensions at
all).  The source code files are mixed with executable and non-
executable "binary" files (data files; not something that you can
read).  I don't want to flag the non-source code files as not having a
header.  The scope of this problem is small so I don't need to worry
about any character sets, etc.

I realize that this can be a complicated problem to solve, but there
are solutions to it.  For example, the Linux "file" command is a
robust solution but does not meet my needs for the previously stated
reason.  I also know that SVN can automatically detect binary files as
well.

Hopefully this helps clear things up...

Thanks,
-James