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MAGIC(5) BSD File Formats Manual MAGIC(5)
NAME
magic -- file command's magic pattern file
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the format of the magic file as
used by the file(1) command, version 5.03. The file(1)
command identifies the type of a file using, among other
tests, a test for whether the file contains certain
``magic patterns''. The file
c:/progra~1/file/share/misc/magic specifies what patterns
are to be tested for, what message or MIME type to print
if a particular pattern is found, and additional informa-
tion to extract from the file.
Each line of the file specifies a test to be performed. A
test compares the data starting at a particular offset in
the file with a byte value, a string or a numeric value.
If the test succeeds, a message is printed. The line con-
sists of the following fields:
offset A number specifying the offset, in bytes, into
the file of the data which is to be tested.
type The type of the data to be tested. The possible
values are:
byte A one-byte value.
short A two-byte value in this machine's
native byte order.
long A four-byte value in this machine's
native byte order.
quad An eight-byte value in this machine's
native byte order.
float A 32-bit single precision IEEE float-
ing point number in this machine's
native byte order.
double A 64-bit double precision IEEE float-
ing point number in this machine's
native byte order.
string A string of bytes. The string type
specification can be optionally fol-
lowed by /[Bbc]*. The ``B'' flag
compacts whitespace in the target,
which must contain at least one
whitespace character. If the magic
has n consecutive blanks, the target
needs at least n consecutive blanks
to match. The ``b'' flag treats
every blank in the target as an
optional blank. Finally the ``c''
flag, specifies case insensitive
matching: lowercase characters in the
magic match both lower and upper case
characters in the target, whereas
upper case characters in the magic
only match uppercase characters in
the target.
pstring A Pascal-style string where the first
byte is interpreted as the an
unsigned length. The string is not
NUL terminated.
date A four-byte value interpreted as a
UNIX date.
qdate A eight-byte value interpreted as a
UNIX date.
ldate A four-byte value interpreted as a
UNIX-style date, but interpreted as
local time rather than UTC.
qldate An eight-byte value interpreted as a
UNIX-style date, but interpreted as
local time rather than UTC.
beid3 A 32-bit ID3 length in big-endian
byte order.
beshort A two-byte value in big-endian byte
order.
belong A four-byte value in big-endian byte
order.
bequad An eight-byte value in big-endian
byte order.
befloat A 32-bit single precision IEEE float-
ing point number in big-endian byte
order.
bedouble A 64-bit double precision IEEE float-
ing point number in big-endian byte
order.
bedate A four-byte value in big-endian byte
order, interpreted as a Unix date.
beqdate An eight-byte value in big-endian
byte order, interpreted as a Unix
date.
beldate A four-byte value in big-endian byte
order, interpreted as a UNIX-style
date, but interpreted as local time
rather than UTC.
beqldate An eight-byte value in big-endian
byte order, interpreted as a UNIX-
style date, but interpreted as local
time rather than UTC.
bestring16 A two-byte unicode (UCS16) string in
big-endian byte order.
leid3 A 32-bit ID3 length in little-endian
byte order.
leshort A two-byte value in little-endian
byte order.
lelong A four-byte value in little-endian
byte order.
lequad An eight-byte value in little-endian
byte order.
lefloat A 32-bit single precision IEEE float-
ing point number in little-endian
byte order.
ledouble A 64-bit double precision IEEE float-
ing point number in little-endian
byte order.
ledate A four-byte value in little-endian
byte order, interpreted as a UNIX
date.
leqdate An eight-byte value in little-endian
byte order, interpreted as a UNIX
date.
leldate A four-byte value in little-endian
byte order, interpreted as a UNIX-
style date, but interpreted as local
time rather than UTC.
leqldate An eight-byte value in little-endian
byte order, interpreted as a UNIX-
style date, but interpreted as local
time rather than UTC.
lestring16 A two-byte unicode (UCS16) string in
little-endian byte order.
melong A four-byte value in middle-endian
(PDP-11) byte order.
medate A four-byte value in middle-endian
(PDP-11) byte order, interpreted as a
UNIX date.
meldate A four-byte value in middle-endian
(PDP-11) byte order, interpreted as a
UNIX-style date, but interpreted as
local time rather than UTC.
indirect Starting at the given offset, consult
the magic database again.
regex A regular expression match in
extended POSIX regular expression
syntax (like egrep). Regular expres-
sions can take exponential time to
process, and their performance is
hard to predict, so their use is dis-
couraged. When used in production
environments, their performance
should be carefully checked. The type
specification can be optionally fol-
lowed by /[c][s]. The ``c'' flag
makes the match case insensitive,
while the ``s'' flag update the off-
set to the start offset of the match,
rather than the end. The regular
expression is tested against line N +
1 onwards, where N is the given off-
set. Line endings are assumed to be
in the machine's native format. ^
and $ match the beginning and end of
individual lines, respectively, not
beginning and end of file.
search A literal string search starting at
the given offset. The same modifier
flags can be used as for string pat-
terns. The modifier flags (if any)
must be followed by /number the
range, that is, the number of posi-
tions at which the match will be
attempted, starting from the start
offset. This is suitable for search-
ing larger binary expressions with
variable offsets, using \ escapes for
special characters. The offset works
as for regex.
default This is intended to be used with the
test x (which is always true) and a
message that is to be used if there
are no other matches.
Each top-level magic pattern (see below for an
explanation of levels) is classified as text or
binary according to the types used. Types
``regex'' and ``search'' are classified as text
tests, unless non-printable characters are used
in the pattern. All other tests are classified as
binary. A top-level pattern is considered to be a
test text when all its patterns are text pat-
terns; otherwise, it is considered to be a binary
pattern. When matching a file, binary patterns
are tried first; if no match is found, and the
file looks like text, then its encoding is deter-
mined and the text patterns are tried.
The numeric types may optionally be followed by &
and a numeric value, to specify that the value is
to be AND'ed with the numeric value before any
comparisons are done. Prepending a u to the type
indicates that ordered comparisons should be
unsigned.
test The value to be compared with the value from the
file. If the type is numeric, this value is
specified in C form; if it is a string, it is
specified as a C string with the usual escapes
permitted (e.g. \n for new-line).
Numeric values may be preceded by a character
indicating the operation to be performed. It may
be =, to specify that the value from the file
must equal the specified value, <, to specify
that the value from the file must be less than
the specified value, >, to specify that the value
from the file must be greater than the specified
value, &, to specify that the value from the file
must have set all of the bits that are set in the
specified value, ^, to specify that the value
from the file must have clear any of the bits
that are set in the specified value, or ~, the
value specified after is negated before tested.
x, to specify that any value will match. If the
character is omitted, it is assumed to be =.
Operators &, ^, and ~ don't work with floats and
doubles. The operator ! specifies that the line
matches if the test does not succeed.
Numeric values are specified in C form; e.g. 13
is decimal, 013 is octal, and 0x13 is hexadeci-
mal.
For string values, the string from the file must
match the specified string. The operators =, <
and > (but not &) can be applied to strings. The
length used for matching is that of the string
argument in the magic file. This means that a
line can match any non-empty string (usually used
to then print the string), with >\0 (because all
non-empty strings are greater than the empty
string).
The special test x always evaluates to true.
message The message to be printed if the compari-
son succeeds. If the string contains a printf(3)
format specification, the value from the file
(with any specified masking performed) is printed
using the message as the format string. If the
string begins with ``\b'', the message printed is
the remainder of the string with no whitespace
added before it: multiple matches are normally
separated by a single space.
An APPLE 4+4 character APPLE creator and type can be spec-
ified as:
!:apple CREATYPE
A MIME type is given on a separate line, which must be the
next non-blank or comment line after the magic line that
identifies the file type, and has the following format:
!:mime MIMETYPE
i.e. the literal string ``!:mime'' followed by the MIME
type.
An optional strength can be supplied on a separate line
which refers to the current magic description using the
following format:
!:strength OP VALUE
The operand OP can be: +, -, *, or / and VALUE is a con-
stant between 0 and 255. This constant is applied using
the specified operand to the currently computed default
magic strength.
Some file formats contain additional information which is
to be printed along with the file type or need additional
tests to determine the true file type. These additional
tests are introduced by one or more > characters preceding
the offset. The number of > on the line indicates the
level of the test; a line with no > at the beginning is
considered to be at level 0. Tests are arranged in a
tree-like hierarchy: If a the test on a line at level n
succeeds, all following tests at level n+1 are performed,
and the messages printed if the tests succeed, untile a
line with level n (or less) appears. For more complex
files, one can use empty messages to get just the
"if/then" effect, in the following way:
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort <0x40 MS-DOS executable
>0x18 leshort >0x3f extended PC executable (e.g., MS Windows)
Offsets do not need to be constant, but can also be read
from the file being examined. If the first character fol-
lowing the last > is a ( then the string after the paren-
thesis is interpreted as an indirect offset. That means
that the number after the parenthesis is used as an offset
in the file. The value at that offset is read, and is
used again as an offset in the file. Indirect offsets are
of the form: (( x [.[bislBISL]][+-][ y ]). The value of x
is used as an offset in the file. A byte, id3 length,
short or long is read at that offset depending on the
[bislBISLm] type specifier. The capitalized types inter-
pret the number as a big endian value, whereas the small
letter versions interpret the number as a little endian
value; the m type interprets the number as a middle endian
(PDP-11) value. To that number the value of y is added
and the result is used as an offset in the file. The
default type if one is not specified is long.
That way variable length structures can be examined:
# MS Windows executables are also valid MS-DOS executables
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort <0x40 MZ executable (MS-DOS)
# skip the whole block below if it is not an extended executable
>0x18 leshort >0x3f
>>(0x3c.l) string PE\0\0 PE executable (MS-Windows)
>>(0x3c.l) string LX\0\0 LX executable (OS/2)
This strategy of examining has a drawback: You must make
sure that you eventually print something, or users may get
empty output (like, when there is neither PE\0\0 nor
LE\0\0 in the above example)
If this indirect offset cannot be used directly, simple
calculations are possible: appending [+-*/%&|^]number
inside parentheses allows one to modify the value read
from the file before it is used as an offset:
# MS Windows executables are also valid MS-DOS executables
0 string MZ
# sometimes, the value at 0x18 is less that 0x40 but there's still an
# extended executable, simply appended to the file
>0x18 leshort <0x40
>>(4.s*512) leshort 0x014c COFF executable (MS-DOS, DJGPP)
>>(4.s*512) leshort !0x014c MZ executable (MS-DOS)
Sometimes you do not know the exact offset as this depends
on the length or position (when indirection was used
before) of preceding fields. You can specify an offset
relative to the end of the last up-level field using `&'
as a prefix to the offset:
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort >0x3f
>>(0x3c.l) string PE\0\0 PE executable (MS-Windows)
# immediately following the PE signature is the CPU type
>>>&0 leshort 0x14c for Intel 80386
>>>&0 leshort 0x184 for DEC Alpha
Indirect and relative offsets can be combined:
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort <0x40
>>(4.s*512) leshort !0x014c MZ executable (MS-DOS)
# if it's not COFF, go back 512 bytes and add the offset taken
# from byte 2/3, which is yet another way of finding the start
# of the extended executable
>>>&(2.s-514) string LE LE executable (MS Windows VxD driver)
Or the other way around:
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort >0x3f
>>(0x3c.l) string LE\0\0 LE executable (MS-Windows)
# at offset 0x80 (-4, since relative offsets start at the end
# of the up-level match) inside the LE header, we find the absolute
# offset to the code area, where we look for a specific signature
>>>(&0x7c.l+0x26) string UPX \b, UPX compressed
Or even both!
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort >0x3f
>>(0x3c.l) string LE\0\0 LE executable (MS-Windows)
# at offset 0x58 inside the LE header, we find the relative offset
# to a data area where we look for a specific signature
>>>&(&0x54.l-3) string UNACE \b, ACE self-extracting archive
Finally, if you have to deal with offset/length pairs in
your file, even the second value in a parenthesized
expression can be taken from the file itself, using
another set of parentheses. Note that this additional
indirect offset is always relative to the start of the
main indirect offset.
0 string MZ
>0x18 leshort >0x3f
>>(0x3c.l) string PE\0\0 PE executable (MS-Windows)
# search for the PE section called ".idata"...
>>>&0xf4 search/0x140 .idata
# ...and go to the end of it, calculated from start+length;
# these are located 14 and 10 bytes after the section name
>>>>(&0xe.l+(-4)) string PK\3\4 \b, ZIP self-extracting archive
SEE ALSO
file(1) - the command that reads this file.
BUGS
The formats long, belong, lelong, melong, short, beshort,
leshort, date, bedate, medate, ledate, beldate, leldate,
and meldate are system-dependent; perhaps they should be
specified as a number of bytes (2B, 4B, etc), since the
files being recognized typically come from a system on
which the lengths are invariant.
BSD August 30, 2008 BSD