identifying file types

[BobLewiston]

Within a C# program, is there any way to tell if a file is a text file or not? I mean a real way, not just basing your conclusion on a file name extension.

[Rashakil Fol]

You can look inside the file and see what's there. If it conforms to your expectations -- if the file or the first 1000 bytes of the file contains only characters that conform to one of some particular set of character encodings, maybe you have a text file.

[cVz]

Rashakil Fol gave the only thing else i could think of ...

But using "*.txt" will work fine ?

[LizR]

Sure, but its not a guarentee doesnt stop people adding a .txt extension to anything

[Ramy Mahrous]

text file means .txt or contains text data like .rtf, or .txt?

[LizR]

Any file extension (or even lack of) could be text inside it.. similarly just as I said, just because it got named .txt doesnt make it text

[Ramy Mahrous]

And they can predict the content of file (Text or binary) that's why I asked!

[ddanbe]

Adobe acrobat reader documents although binary often start with the text %PDF

[Ramy Mahrous]

If you look Danny to the end of pdf files you'll find too a lot of special characters...

[LizR]

A lot of files start with a specific signature, zip files etc.. However, this isnt answering his quesiton.. mind you, nor is he we've just done a lot of speculation ..

[Ramy Mahrous]

Is it the end of the world? we gave a lot of solutions not speculations!!, and if I were he, I used some of.