Integration of gnu file tool or recognition of "magic bytes"

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wwwprofi
Posts: 4
Joined: 13 Aug 2016 13:05

Integration of gnu file tool or recognition of "magic bytes"

Post by wwwprofi »

In order to recognise filetypes ... e.g.
- in memory
- in discs
- for files with wrong extension

it would be useful to have an integration of the "GNU file" tool, which is very popular für X-Operating Systems, but not for Windows.
There is a portation on
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/file.htm
OT: unfortunately it doesn't seem to be maintained well, since is recognises *.docx as ZIP-Archives ...which they in fact are. But *.odt is recognised right.

There is also a public list of "magic bytes", which help to recognise file types:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_signatures
=> "hex signature"
and maybe there's a db-like form of this list, which could be uncluded into HxD to find those magic bytes or alarm, when file extension doesn't match to magic byte when opening a file. E.g. irfanview does something like this when opening a picture.

I guess it could be a great enhancement for HxD to find and recognise filetypes.
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