Perl has the following constructs to check whether a file is considered to contain "text" or "binary" data:
if (-T $filename) { print "file contains 'text' characters\n"; } if (-B $filename) { print "file contains 'binary' characters\n"; } Is there already a Python analog to these? I'm happy to write them on my own if no such constructs currently exist, but before I start, I'd like to make sure that I'm not "re-inventing the wheel". By the way, here's what the perl docs say about these constructs. I'm looking for something similar in Python: ... The -T and -B switches work as follows. The first block or so ... of the file is examined for odd characters such as strange control ... codes or characters with the high bit set. If too many strange ... characters (>30%) are found, it's a -B file; otherwise it's a -T ... file. Also, any file containing null in the first block is ... considered a binary file. [ ... ] Thanks in advance for any suggestions. -- Lloyd Zusman l...@asfast.com God bless you. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list