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file is funny, i just did file on standard JS file >file main.js >main.js: ASCII C++ program text, with very long lines
by franze 12y ago
file is funny, i just did file on standard JS file
>file main.js
>main.js: ASCII C++ program text, with very long lines
- chrisseaton 12y agoWhy does file always passive aggressively note the fact that you're using 'very long lines'? I'm not sure it's relevant to the format of the file.
- scrollaway 12y ago`file` does more than identify the file format; it also looks for properties. It can detect sizes and color properties for most image and video formats, various audio properties for audio formats etc. "Very long lines" is sort of a property of text files. It means it's unlikely to have been written by hand for one thing.
- chrisseaton 12y agoHmmm... I'm cynically inclined to believe it's there as a condescending remark about people the authors of file think aren't real hackers because they're not wrapping their lines to 80 characters.
- tedunangst 12y agoI'm cynically inclined to believe it's there to identify people who can't read the source to discover the cutoff is 300 characters.
- chrisseaton 12y agoBut it also has this warning for plain text files - so it's not just about source code where 300 lines is indeed quite long. However 300 characters is very short for a paragraph of text, if you aren't manually wrapping your plain text.
- jumpwah 12y agoeh, still useful for checking if plaintext or not for those who live in the terminal