The Linux file command displays the type of a file. It\u2019s helpful when you have to find out the type of file you\u2019ve never seen before or the file does not have a file extension.<\/p>\n
The syntax for the Linux file command is as follows:<\/p>\n
It can take one or more file names as its arguments.<\/p>\n
The file command classify files based on a series of tests and determines the file type based on the first successful test.<\/p>\n
In it\u2019s simplest form when used without any option, the file command will display the file name along with the file type:<\/p>\n
To show just the file type use the -b (–brief) option:<\/p>\n
As you can see from the output above the \/etc\/group file is a text file.<\/p>\n
You can pass more than one files to the file command:<\/p>\n
file \/bin\/bash \/opt\/card.zip<\/p>\n
The command will print the type of each file on a separate file:<\/p>\n
\/bin\/bash: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter \/lib64\/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU\/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=42602c973215ba5b8ab5159c527e72f38e83ee52, stripped
\n\/opt\/card.zip: Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract<\/p>\n
It also accepts wildcard characters. For example to find the type of each .jpg files in the current directory you would run:<\/p>\n
imgage001.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, aspect ratio, density 1×1, segment length 16, progressive, precision 8, 2083×1250, components 3
\nimgage031.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, resolution (DPI), density 72×72, segment length 16, comment: “Created with GIMP”, baseline, precision 8, 1280×1024, components<\/p>\n
Use the -i (–mime) option to determine the mime type of a file:<\/p>\n
file -i \/var\/www\/index.html\/var\/www\/index.html: text\/html; charset=us-ascii<\/p>\n
By now you should have a good understanding of how to use the Linux file command. For more information about the find command, see the file man page<\/a>.<\/p>\n