1. Introduction

This manual is incomplete: No attempt is made to explain basic file concepts in a way suitable for novices. Thus, if you are interested, please get involved in improving this manual. The entire GNU community will benefit.

The GNU file utilities are mostly compatible with the POSIX.2 standard.

Please report bugs to [email protected]. Remember to include the version number, machine architecture, input files, and any other information needed to reproduce the bug: your input, what you expected, what you got, and why it is wrong. Diffs are welcome, but please include a description of the problem as well, since this is sometimes difficult to infer. See section `Bugs' in GNU CC.

This manual was originally derived from the Unix man pages in the distribution, which were written by David MacKenzie and updated by Jim Meyering. What you are reading now is the authoritative documentation for these utilities; the man pages are no longer being maintained. François Pinard did the initial conversion to Texinfo format. Karl Berry did the indexing, some reorganization, and editing of the results. Richard Stallman contributed his usual invaluable insights to the overall process.