From: kjana@...4lab.to (YANAGAWA Kazuhisa)
Date: 2003-02-17T21:10:11+09:00
Subject: Re: File magic class

In message <3E50AC20.7090400@semantico.com>
peter@semantico.com writes:

> Is there are class for Ruby that does the same as the file command and 
> tell you what type of file you are looking at?
> 
> I have the Perl one but can't find a Ruby one? Does it already exist or 
> should I create it?

Probably there's a more well written module but....

Here's my version of magic.rb, which reads a magic database and
returns a string.  That's slow, ugly and not complete but at least
working on simple cases.
<http://www.dm4lab.to/~kjana/ruby/magic.rb>

    > ruby magic.rb /bin/sh /usr/share/misc/magic
    "ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD)"
    > ruby magic.rb AICbook.ps /usr/share/misc/magic 
    "PostScript document text conforming at level 3.0"
    > ruby magic.rb .comment /usr/share/misc/magic         
    nil

Note I didn't write any documentation and it lacks many features such
as correct treatment of relative offset of patterns or string
comparison in dictionary order.


-- 
kjana@dm4lab.to                              February 17, 2003
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.