File Format Identification

Function definition: Tools that enable the automatic identification of the file format of a particular file, typically by examining characteristic codes (often termed file format magic) in the file header.

Lifecycle stage: Ingest

Tools for this function

Tool	Purpose
Apache Tika	Java based tool for identifying file formats using signatures and extracting metadata and text content from documents.
BorgFormat	A web application and service that combines multiple tools for format identification and validation.
Cloc	Cloc (Count Lines of Code) serves not only to count the lines of Code,but also guesses the programming language, thus can be used to identify files. It is a command line tool which is easy to use.
Crazy-fast-image-scan	A script to scan media very quickly to find out what kind of content it contains
DROID (Digital Record Object Identification)	DROID (Digital Record Object Identification) is a software tool developed to perform automated batch identification of file formats.
DUMPBIN Utility	The DUMPBIN utility, which is provided with the 32-bit version of Microsoft Visual C++, combines the abilities of the LINK, LIB, and EXEHDR utilities.
DiPS (Digital Preservation Solution)	DiPS (OAIS compliant Digital Preservation Solution)
DiskFormatID	Identify floppy disk formats from kryoflux stream files
Duke Data Accessioner	Data Accessioner provides a graphical user interface to aid in migrating data from physical media to a dedicated file server, documenting the process and using MD5 checksums to identify any errors introduced in transfer.
FFAStrans	Task automation engine, mostly used in audio and video visual content management.
FIDO (Format Identification for Digital Objects)	A PRONOM based, command line, file format identification tool written in Python
FITS (File Information Tool Set)	FITS allows data curators to identify, validate, and extract technical metadata for the objects in their digital repository.
File Format Identification Pronom	Perl API to analyze and handle droid (PRONOM) signatures
Filestar	Universal file converter for 900+ file types.
Fine Free File Command	This is the home page for the open source implementation of the file(1) command that ships with every free operating system (OpenBSD, Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc.
Fq	Tool, language and decoders for working with binary data.
Gvfs-info	gvfs-info - print information about files and directories
JHOVE (Harvard Object Validation Environment)	JHOVE provides functions to perform format-specific identification, validation, and characterization of digital objects.
JHOVE2	JHOVE2 allows data curators to characterise the digital objects in their repositories.
Libmagic-dev	This library can be used to classify files according to magic number tests.
Libsharedmime	This is an implementation for libsharedmime.
MediaConch	MediaConch is a file validation software.
NARA File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester	NARA File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester allows a user to analyze the contents of a file system or external drive and generates statistics about the contents of the contained directories.
Nanite	A friendly swarm of format-identifying robots
Officeparser.py	officerparser.py is a python script that parses the format of OLE compound documents used by Microsoft Office applications.
Ohcount	Analyses plain text files, looking for code (scripting languages etc.)
PRONOM Signature Development Utility	Output DROID compatible file format signature files using PRONOM syntax
Puremagic	Puremagic is a cross-platform pure python module that will identify a file based off it's magic numbers
Siegfried	A PRONOM based, command line, file format identification tool using Aho Corasick matching and no buffer limits.
TrID File Identifier	TrID is a utility designed to identify file types from their binary signatures.
Web Archive Discovery	Indexing and discovery tools for web archives.