6. file

Lesson Content

In the previous lesson we learned about touch, let’s go back to that for a bit. Did you notice that the filename didn’t conform to standard naming like you’ve probably seen with other operating systems like Windows? Normally you would expect a file called banana.jpeg and expect a JPEG picture file.

In Linux, filenames aren’t required to represent the contents of the file. You can create a file called funny.gif that isn’t actually a GIF.

To find out what kind of file a file is, you can use the file command. It will show you a description of the file’s contents.

$ file banana.jpg 

Exercise

Run the file command on a few different directories and files and note the output.

Quiz Question