Re: using libmagic in Emacs?

[Miles Bader]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> If some other Lisp code is interested in the mime type of a file,
> there is a much easier way to find it out: run `file'.

Well, not entirely trivial of course, since Emacs then needs to
interpret the results from the file command.

> To complicate Emacs with another library just to make that operation
> a little faster is a step in the wrong direction.

I wonder how hard it would be to have some elisp that understands the
"magic" rules that the file command uses... at first glance, they don't
seem particularly complex; e.g., this is the first entry from
"/usr/share/file/magic":

   0    lelong          0xc3cbc6c5      RISC OS Chunk data
   >12  string          OBJ_            \b, AOF object
   >12  string          LIB_            \b, ALF library

If there was such elisp code, Emacs could use any magic rules file on
the system, and in addition, could distribute it's own (perhaps smaller)
set.

-Miles

-- 
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