Re: unix file attributes: general question

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

> > Is there any other attribute information stored or potentially stored
> > in the file? Applications apparently can detect a document's file
> > type, so that information must be held somewhere. Is information about
> > the document's MIME type and charset also held?
> 
> No. Applications that detect the file type do so by very well-educated
> guesswork. The 'file' command does this, for example.
> 
> 'stat' (in the stat package) shows you all the metadata. 'ls' can be
> persuaded to show you pretty much all of that by using various options.

Very helpful, thanks. I found the man file particularly interesting. 

Haines