Re: Registering a media type for Debian binary packages ?

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Guillem Jover writes ("Re: Registering a media type for Debian binary packages ?"):
> On Fri, 2014-01-03 at 10:42:09 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > Magic number(s):
> > Files usually start with the following string:
> > !<arch>
> 
> This is not enough, this just marks any ar archive, the distinguishing
> magic for a .deb is the debian-binary ar member.

Conveniently, the exact format of this is constant and appears at the
start of the file.  A .deb file[1] starts with "!<arch>\ndebian-binary".

[1] Strictly speaking I'm talking about the version 2.0 .debs that we
are all using nowadays.

Ian.