Get File MIME Type from Command Line

By  on  

I've gotten skilled at shell scripting over the years. I love a good GUI but knowing how to automate makes you a much more powerful engineer. Much of my scripting requires recursing over directories and processing a file if it meets a given criteria, which is often file extension or MIME type.

You can use the following shell command to get a file's MIME type:

file --mime-type -b Downloads/main.js
# text/plain

file --mime-type -b Downloads/logo.jpg
# image/jpeg

It's important to use the brief (-b) option in the command or you may receive an error message.

MIME type is used for validation and any number of other informational use cases. Luckily the file command and and a flag is all you need!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Columns

    One major gripe that we've always had about CSS is that creating layouts seems to be more difficult than it should be. We have, of course, adapted and mastered the techniques for creating layouts, but there's no shaking the feeling that there should be a...

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!