Re: is text file?

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 28,  3:31pm, Jose Unpingco wrote:
} Subject: is text file?
}
} I usually use PERL's -T in a function to check if a file is ASCII
} or binary. Is there a way to do this using zsh.

I'm sure Larry Wall will forgive me for saying that perl's -T is a hack.
It reads a chunk of the file and guesses whether the whole file is ASCII
based on the contents of that fragment.

Zsh's globbing uses only information from readdir() and stat()/lstat(),
and hopefully is going to stay that way.

An approximation might be (with extendedglob set):

% ls **/*~*(${~${(j/|/)fignore}})(.)

That is, all plain files that do not have extensions listed in `fignore'.
You could change (.) to (.^*) to omit executables, but that would also
omit most shell scripts.

(Somebody tell me why the extra ${~...} is needed in that expression.)

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com