mimetype - determine file type
mimetype [options] [-] files
This script tries to determine the mime type of a file using the Shared MIME-info database. It is intended as a kind of file(1) work-alike, but uses mimetypes instead of descriptions.
If one symlinks the file command to mimetype it will behave a little more compatible, see --file-compat. Commandline options to specify alternative magic files are not implemented the same because of the conflicting data formats. Also the wording of the descriptions will differ.
Do not prepend filenames to output lines (brief mode).
Print file descriptions instead of mime types, this is the default when using --file-compat.
Read the names of the files to be examined from the file 'namefile' (one per line) before the argument list.
Make mimetype behave a little more file(1) compatible. This is turned on automaticly when you call mimetype by a link called 'file'.
A single '-' won't be considered a seperator between options and filenames anymore, but becomes identical to -s. ( You can still use '--' as seperator, but that is not backward compatible with the original file command. ) Also the default becomes to print descriptions instead of mimetypes.
Print a help message and exits.
Use mime types, opposite to --describe, this is the default when _not_ using --file-compat.
Follow symbolic links.
The language attribute specifies a two letter language code, this makes descriptions being outputted in the specified language.
Do not align output fields.
If you want an alternative output format, you can specify a format string containing the following escapes:
%f for the filename %d description %m mime type
Alignment is not available when using this, you need to post-process the output to do that.
Determine type of content from STDIN.
Print the version of the program and exit.
See File::MimeInfo.
If a file has an empty mimetype or an empty description, most probably the file doesn't exist and the given name doesn't match any globs. An empty description can also mean that there is no description available in the language you specified.
The program exits with a non-zero exit value if either the commandline arguments failed, a module it depends on wasn't found or the shared mime-info database wasn't accesable. See File::MimeInfo for more details on this last case.
Since File::MimeInfo currently only uses globs and doesn't do any real magic parsing, reading from stdin wasn't implemented yet.
No known bugs, please mail the author if you find one.
Jaap Karrssenberg <pardus@cpan.org>
Copyright (c) 2003 Jaap G Karssenberg. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
file(1), update-mime-database(1), File::MimeInfo(3), http://www.freedesktop.org/software/shared-mime-info/
To install File::MimeInfo, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm File::MimeInfo
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install File::MimeInfo
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.