Distinguish between binary and text files

[André Rosendaal]

Hi,

I need a test so I can determine whether a url points to a text file or to a
binary file. Actually, I need to distinguish between streaming files and
metafiles (e.g. asx files). I tried getmimetype, but that does not seem te
be reliab;e (dependent on the web server configuration). Can anyone help?
The test should be something like:

get url
if isbinaryfile ($url) {
do what you need to do with streaming files
} else {
do what you need to do with text files
}

Thanks,
André Rosendaal

[Steve]

You could try the algorithm used by - amongst others - the diff tool:

"...diff determines whether a file is text or binary by checking the
first few bytes in the file; the exact number of bytes is system
dependent, but it is typically several thousand. If every byte in that
part of the file is non-null, diff considers the file to be text;
otherwise it considers the file to be binary."
Non-null just means any character other than ASCII 0.

---
Steve