Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
From: doug-merritt@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Text files
Message-ID: <6238@cup.portal.com>
Date: 4 Jun 88 19:55:19 GMT
References: <172@snll-arpagw.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 23
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.4407

Sam asks:
>Does anybody know of an algorithm for detecting weather a file is a
>text file or not short of reading the the entire file.

The obvious answer is: see whether the first 512 bytes contain anything
other than ascii graphics (space thru tilde) and whitespace (cr, nl,
backspace, control-L).

If you don't want to read the whole file, don't read the whole file.
Am I misunderstanding your question???

If what you're asking is "does AmigaDOS keep track of file type, so
you could do some magic call and find out that it's a text file for
certain", then the answer is "no".

Unfortunately for those of us who are object-oriented. Or fortunately,
from the point of view of those who hate dealing with Macintosh resource
forks.
	Doug
--
      Doug Merritt        ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
                      or  ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
                      or  ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug