6. file

In the previous lesson, we learned about touch. Let's revisit that for a bit. Did you notice that the filename didn't conform to standard naming conventions, like you've probably seen with other operating systems such as Windows? Normally, you would expect a file called banana.jpeg to be 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

Exercises

Practice makes perfect! Here are some hands-on labs to reinforce your understanding of inspecting file content and properties:

Linux ls Command: Content Listing - Learn the Linux ls command to efficiently list and analyze file and directory contents, which often precedes or follows using the file command to understand what's in your directories.
Linux cat Command: File Concatenating - Practice viewing and manipulating text files, a common task after identifying a file's type.
Linux more Command: File Scrolling - Enhance your command-line skills for navigating and exploring large text files, building on the ability to identify file types and then inspect their content.

These labs will help you apply the concepts of file inspection and content viewing in real scenarios and build confidence with managing files in Linux.

6. file

Exercises

Quiz

What command can you use to find the file type of a file?