These functions operate on the magic database file which is described in

The function

creates a magic cookie pointer and returns it. It returns NULL if there was an error allocating the magic cookie. The

argument specifies how the other magic functions should behave:

No special handling.

Print debugging messages to stderr.

If the file queried is a symlink, follow it.

If the file is compressed, unpack it and look at the contents.

If the file is a block or character special device, then open the device and try to look in its contents.

Return a mime string, instead of a textual description.

Return all matches, not just the first.

Check the magic database for consistency and print warnings to stderr.

On systems that support

or

attempt to preserve the access time of files analyzed.

Don't translate unprintable characters to a \ooo octal representation.

Treat operating system errors while trying to open files and follow symlinks as real errors, instead of printing them in the magic buffer.

The

function closes the

database and deallocates any resources used.

The

function returns a textual explanation of the last error, or NULL if there was no error.

The

function returns the last operating system error number (

that was encountered by a system call.

The

function returns a textual description of the contents of the

argument, or NULL if an error occurred. If the

is NULL, then stdin is used.

The

function returns a textual description of the contents of the

argument with

bytes size.

The

function, sets the

described above.

The

function can be used to check the validity of entries in the colon separated database files passed in as

or NULL for the default database. It returns 0 on success and -1 on failure.

The

function can be used to compile the the colon separated list of database files passed in as

or NULL for the default database. It returns 0 on success and -1 on failure. The compiled files created are named from the

of each file argument with ".mgc" appended to it.

The

function must be used to load the the colon separated list of database files passed in as

or NULL for the default database file before any magic queries can performed.

The default database file is named by the MAGIC environment variable. If that variable is not set, the default database file name is /usr/share/file/magic.

adds ".mime" and/or ".mgc" to the database filename as appropriate.

The function

returns a magic cookie on success and NULL on failure setting errno to an appropriate value. It will set errno to EINVAL if an unsupported value for flags was given. The

and

functions return 0 on success and -1 on failure. The

and

functions return a string on success and NULL on failure. The

function returns a textual description of the errors of the above functions, or NULL if there was no error. Finally,

returns -1 on systems that don't support

or

when

is set.

The non-compiled default magic mime database.

The compiled default magic mime database.

The non-compiled default magic database.

The compiled default magic database.

Måns Rullgård Initial libmagic implementation, and configuration. Christos Zoulas API cleanup, error code and allocation handling.