> > This seems misguided. We have a horrible program called "file", but > > in general people identify what a file is what what purpose it serves > > not just by the filename, but also by how it starts. The "untrusted > > comment" has become the way to identify a signify file. It has become > > colloquial. > > > > Yes, there is a magic number immediately after that, but it is at > > unknown byte offset. It isn't a offset-addressed file like gzip. So > > your proposal doesn't actually help solve anything, in fact it > > increases the ambiguity. > > Nice catch, I haven't thought about file(1). > I consider file(1) really useful. But at the same time it's way too > empirical/phenomenological. Sometimes it's unable to reliably tell the > truth. Only corresponding program/codec can tell if a file really > contains data if this type. [in out case it's signify(1)]. > Should we duplicate codec logic and put in into separate file(1)? > Not the best idea. > Can we include all the types info/magic just into one file(1) utility > (/etc/magic)? > No. > Should we create filetypes to be detectable by file(1)? > Don't think so.
I've pointed out that people identify the purpose of the file in various ways. You wish to basically throw that out? > > So why not consider that call it a day, and leave it alone? > > Just because. Well I don't see any need to introduce incompatible variations.
