This can be nice if you’re automating something to detect a file type to then run an appropriate command, perhaps after a file has been downloaded with curl and the archive type needs to be determined before a proper command can be executed.ĭownloadedFile.zip: application/zip charset=binary You can also issue the file command on literally any other file, be it images, archives, executables, or anything else you want to point the command at. With “text/plain” being the file type and “unknown-8bit” being the character set file encoding. Text.txt: text/plain charset=unknown-8bit Hitting return with a proper file name as the input will reveal a character set like UTF-8, us-ascii, binary, 8bit, etc.įor example, let’s say we’re checking the character set and file encoding of a file named “text.txt” then the syntax would look as so: (In case it wasn’t obvious, that’s a capital “i” as the flag as in -I, not a lowercase L)

Determining File Encoding & Character Set via Command Line in Mac OS The file command works in Mac OS and Mac oS X as well as linux and many other unix variations, making this trick helpful for scripts and other similar purposes too.

This probably won’t be a relevant tip to many users, but if you’re required to be working with a specific character set for something or need to know what a file type, encoding, or character set of an inputted item is by way of the command line, then this will do the trick.

Edit text file in terminal mac