HP-UX 11i System Administration Handbook and Toolkit, Second Edition

The file Command

The file command is used to determine the file type. This command is useful because the name of a file does not always indicate its file type. The following examples perform a long listing of a file to provide some background information on the file, and then the file command is run to show the file type. I don't cover the command used to list files until the next chapter, but I include it in these examples. The ls command provides a listing of files. ls is covered in detail in the next chapter. We need to use it in this chapter in only its basic form.. Combined with the "-l" option, you can produce a long listing that provides a lot of information about files. Using ls -l in the following examples, you will see the name of each ...