> It's not what you are looking for here, but os.stat gives you access to > lots of information about files. In Linux and Windows, though, the > 'type' of a file is incorporated into its filename through an extension.
No, only in windows. Under linux/unix in general there might exist the file-command, which is basically a heuristic approach to the problem by scanning for magic numbers and the like. Should be installed on any decent system. I'm not aware of a wrapping of "file" for python, and as the search terms are pretty non-descriptive a quick google search hasn't enlightend me. But you could always go for subprocess and invoke file, of course. Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
