magic

MAGIC(5)                    BSD File Formats Manual                   MAGIC(5)

NAME
     magic -- file command's magic pattern file

DESCRIPTION
     This manual page documents the format of magic files as used by the
     file(1) command, version 5.38.  The file(1) command identifies the type
     of a file using, among other tests, a test for whether the file contains
     certain "magic patterns".  The database of these "magic patterns" is usu-
     ally located in a binary file in /usr/share/misc/magic.mgc or a directory
     of source text magic pattern fragment files in /usr/share/misc/magic.
     The database specifies what patterns are to be tested for, what message
     or MIME type to print if a particular pattern is found, and additional
     information to extract from the file.

     The format of the source fragment files that are used to build this data-
     base is as follows: Each line of a fragment file specifies a test to be
     performed.  A test compares the data starting at a particular offset in
     the file with a byte value, a string or a numeric value.  If the test
     succeeds, a message is printed.  The line consists of the following
     fields:

     offset   A number specifying the offset (in bytes) into the file of the
              data which is to be tested.  This offset can be a negative num-
              ber if it is:
              o   The first direct offset of the magic entry (at continuation
                  level 0), in which case it is interpreted an offset from end
                  end of the file going backwards.  This works only when a
                  file descriptor to the file is available and it is a regular
                  file.
              o   A continuation offset relative to the end of the last up-
                  level field (&).

     type     The type of the data to be tested.  The possible values are:

              byte        A one-byte value.

              short       A two-byte value in this machine's native byte or-
                          der.

              long        A four-byte value in this machine's native byte or-
                          der.

              quad        An eight-byte value in this machine's native byte
                          order.

              float       A 32-bit single precision IEEE floating point number
                          in this machine's native byte order.

              double      A 64-bit double precision IEEE floating point number
                          in this machine's native byte order.

              string      A string of bytes.  The string type specification
                          can be optionally followed by /[WwcCtbT]*.  The "W"
                          flag compacts whitespace in the target, which must
                          contain at least one whitespace character.  If the
                          magic has n consecutive blanks, the target needs at
                          least n consecutive blanks to match.  The "w" flag
                          treats every blank in the magic as an optional
                          blank.  The "c" flag specifies case insensitive
                          matching: lower case characters in the magic match
                          both lower and upper case characters in the target,
                          whereas upper case characters in the magic only
                          match upper case characters in the target.  The "C"
                          flag specifies case insensitive matching: upper case
                          characters in the magic match both lower and upper
                          case characters in the target, whereas lower case
                          characters in the magic only match upper case char-
                          acters in the target.  To do a complete case insen-
                          sitive match, specify both "c" and "C".  The "t"
                          flag forces the test to be done for text files,
                          while the "b" flag forces the test to be done for
                          binary files.  The "T" flag causes the string to be
                          trimmed, i.e. leading and trailing whitespace is
                          deleted before the string is printed.

              pstring     A Pascal-style string where the first byte/short/int
                          is interpreted as the unsigned length.  The length
                          defaults to byte and can be specified as a modifier.
                          The following modifiers are supported:
                          B  A byte length (default).
                          H  A 2 byte big endian length.
                          h  A 2 byte little endian length.
                          L  A 4 byte big endian length.
                          l  A 4 byte little endian length.
                          J  The length includes itself in its count.
                          The string is not NUL terminated.  "J" is used
                          rather than the more valuable "I" because this type
                          of length is a feature of the JPEG format.

              date        A four-byte value interpreted as a UNIX date.

              qdate       An eight-byte value interpreted as a UNIX date.

              ldate       A four-byte value interpreted as a UNIX-style date,
                          but interpreted as local time rather than UTC.

              qldate      An eight-byte value interpreted as a UNIX-style
                          date, but interpreted as local time rather than UTC.

              qwdate      An eight-byte value interpreted as a Windows-style
                          date.

              beid3       A 32-bit ID3 length in big-endian byte order.

              beshort     A two-byte value in big-endian byte order.

              belong      A four-byte value in big-endian byte order.

              bequad      An eight-byte value in big-endian byte order.

              befloat     A 32-bit single precision IEEE floating point number
                          in big-endian byte order.

              bedouble    A 64-bit double precision IEEE floating point number
                          in big-endian byte order.

              bedate      A four-byte value in big-endian byte order, inter-
                          preted as a Unix date.

              beqdate     An eight-byte value in big-endian byte order, inter-
                          preted as a Unix date.

              beldate     A four-byte value in big-endian byte order, inter-
                          preted as a UNIX-style date, but interpreted as lo-
                          cal time rather than UTC.

              beqldate    An eight-byte value in big-endian byte order, inter-
                          preted as a UNIX-style date, but interpreted as lo-
                          cal time rather than UTC.

              beqwdate    An eight-byte value in big-endian byte order, inter-
                          preted as a Windows-style date.

              bestring16  A two-byte unicode (UCS16) string in big-endian byte
                          order.

              leid3       A 32-bit ID3 length in little-endian byte order.

              leshort     A two-byte value in little-endian byte order.

              lelong      A four-byte value in little-endian byte order.

              lequad      An eight-byte value in little-endian byte order.

              lefloat     A 32-bit single precision IEEE floating point number
                          in little-endian byte order.

              ledouble    A 64-bit double precision IEEE floating point number
                          in little-endian byte order.

              ledate      A four-byte value in little-endian byte order, in-
                          terpreted as a UNIX date.

              leqdate     An eight-byte value in little-endian byte order, in-
                          terpreted as a UNIX date.

              leldate     A four-byte value in little-endian byte order, in-
                          terpreted as a UNIX-style date, but interpreted as
                          local time rather than UTC.

              leqldate    An eight-byte value in little-endian byte order, in-
                          terpreted as a UNIX-style date, but interpreted as
                          local time rather than UTC.

              leqwdate    An eight-byte value in little-endian byte order, in-
                          terpreted as a Windows-style date.

              lestring16  A two-byte unicode (UCS16) string in little-endian
                          byte order.

              melong      A four-byte value in middle-endian (PDP-11) byte or-
                          der.

              medate      A four-byte value in middle-endian (PDP-11) byte or-
                          der, interpreted as a UNIX date.

              meldate     A four-byte value in middle-endian (PDP-11) byte or-
                          der, interpreted as a UNIX-style date, but inter-
                          preted as local time rather than UTC.

              indirect    Starting at the given offset, consult the magic
                          database again.  The offset of the indirect magic is
                          by default absolute in the file, but one can specify
                          /r to indicate that the offset is relative from the
                          beginning of the entry.

              name        Define a "named" magic instance that can be called
                          from another use magic entry, like a subroutine
                          call.  Named instance direct magic offsets are rela-
                          tive to the offset of the previous matched entry,
                          but indirect offsets are relative to the beginning
                          of the file as usual.  Named magic entries always
                          match.

              use         Recursively call the named magic starting from the
                          current offset.  If the name of the referenced be-
                          gins with a ^ then the endianness of the magic is
                          switched; if the magic mentioned leshort for exam-
                          ple, it is treated as beshort and vice versa.  This
                          is useful to avoid duplicating the rules for differ-
                          ent endianness.

              regex       A regular expression match in extended POSIX regular
                          expression syntax (like egrep).  Regular expressions
                          can take exponential time to process, and their per-
                          formance is hard to predict, so their use is dis-
                          couraged.  When used in production environments,
                          their performance should be carefully checked.  The
                          size of the string to search should also be limited
                          by specifying /<length>, to avoid performance issues
                          scanning long files.  The type specification can
                          also be optionally followed by /[c][s][l].  The "c"
                          flag makes the match case insensitive, while the "s"
                          flag update the offset to the start offset of the
                          match, rather than the end.  The "l" modifier,
                          changes the limit of length to mean number of lines
                          instead of a byte count.  Lines are delimited by the
                          platforms native line delimiter.  When a line count
                          is specified, an implicit byte count also computed
                          assuming each line is 80 characters long.  If nei-
                          ther a byte or line count is specified, the search
                          is limited automatically to 8KiB.  ^ and $ match the
                          beginning and end of individual lines, respectively,
                          not beginning and end of file.

              search      A literal string search starting at the given off-
                          set.  The same modifier flags can be used as for
                          string patterns.  The search expression must contain
                          the range in the form /number, that is the number of
                          positions at which the match will be attempted,
                          starting from the start offset.  This is suitable
                          for searching larger binary expressions with vari-
                          able offsets, using \ escapes for special charac-
                          ters.  The order of modifier and number is not rele-
                          vant.

              default     This is intended to be used with the test x (which
                          is always true) and it has no type.  It matches when
                          no other test at that continuation level has matched
                          before.  Clearing that matched tests for a continua-
                          tion level, can be done using the clear test.

              clear       This test is always true and clears the match flag
                          for that continuation level.  It is intended to be
                          used with the default test.

              For compatibility with the Single UNIX Standard, the type speci-
              fiers dC and d1 are equivalent to byte, the type specifiers uC
              and u1 are equivalent to ubyte, the type specifiers dS and d2
              are equivalent to short, the type specifiers uS and u2 are
              equivalent to ushort, the type specifiers dI, dL, and d4 are
              equivalent to long, the type specifiers uI, uL, and u4 are
              equivalent to ulong, the type specifier d8 is equivalent to
              quad, the type specifier u8 is equivalent to uquad, and the type
              specifier s is equivalent to string.  In addition, the type
              specifier dQ is equivalent to quad and the type specifier uQ is
              equivalent to uquad.

              Each top-level magic pattern (see below for an explanation of
              levels) is classified as text or binary according to the types
              used.  Types "regex" and "search" are classified as text tests,
              unless non-printable characters are used in the pattern.  All
              other tests are classified as binary.  A top-level pattern is
              considered to be a test text when all its patterns are text pat-
              terns; otherwise, it is considered to be a binary pattern.  When
              matching a file, binary patterns are tried first; if no match is
              found, and the file looks like text, then its encoding is deter-
              mined and the text patterns are tried.

              The numeric types may optionally be followed by & and a numeric
              value, to specify that the value is to be AND'ed with the nu-
              meric value before any comparisons are done.  Prepending a u to
              the type indicates that ordered comparisons should be unsigned.

     test     The value to be compared with the value from the file.  If the
              type is numeric, this value is specified in C form; if it is a
              string, it is specified as a C string with the usual escapes
              permitted (e.g. \n for new-line).

              Numeric values may be preceded by a character indicating the op-
              eration to be performed.  It may be =, to specify that the value
              from the file must equal the specified value, <, to specify that
              the value from the file must be less than the specified value,
              >, to specify that the value from the file must be greater than
              the specified value, &, to specify that the value from the file
              must have set all of the bits that are set in the specified
              value, ^, to specify that the value from the file must have
              clear any of the bits that are set in the specified value, or ~,
              the value specified after is negated before tested.  x, to spec-
              ify that any value will match.  If the character is omitted, it
              is assumed to be =.  Operators &, ^, and ~ don't work with
              floats and doubles.  The operator ! specifies that the line
              matches if the test does not succeed.

              Numeric values are specified in C form; e.g.  13 is decimal, 013
              is octal, and 0x13 is hexadecimal.

              Numeric operations are not performed on date types, instead the
              numeric value is interpreted as an offset.

              For string values, the string from the file must match the spec-
              ified string.  The operators =, < and > (but not &) can be ap-
              plied to strings.  The length used for matching is that of the
              string argument in the magic file.  This means that a line can
              match any non-empty string (usually used to then print the
              string), with >\0 (because all non-empty strings are greater
              than the empty string).

              Dates are treated as numerical values in the respective internal
              representation.

              The special test x always evaluates to true.

     message  The message to be printed if the comparison succeeds.  If the
              string contains a printf(3) format specification, the value from
              the file (with any specified masking performed) is printed using
              the message as the format string.  If the string begins with
              "\b", the message printed is the remainder of the string with no
              whitespace added before it: multiple matches are normally sepa-
              rated by a single space.

     An APPLE 4+4 character APPLE creator and type can be specified as:

           !:apple CREATYPE

     A MIME type is given on a separate line, which must be the next non-blank
     or comment line after the magic line that identifies the file type, and
     has the following format:

           !:mime  MIMETYPE

     i.e. the literal string "!:mime" followed by the MIME type.

     An optional strength can be supplied on a separate line which refers to
     the current magic description using the following format:

           !:strength OP VALUE

     The operand OP can be: +, -, *, or / and VALUE is a constant between 0
     and 255.  This constant is applied using the specified operand to the
     currently computed default magic strength.

     Some file formats contain additional information which is to be printed
     along with the file type or need additional tests to determine the true
     file type.  These additional tests are introduced by one or more > char-
     acters preceding the offset.  The number of > on the line indicates the
     level of the test; a line with no > at the beginning is considered to be
     at level 0.  Tests are arranged in a tree-like hierarchy: if the test on
     a line at level n succeeds, all following tests at level n+1 are per-
     formed, and the messages printed if the tests succeed, until a line with
     level n (or less) appears.  For more complex files, one can use empty
     messages to get just the "if/then" effect, in the following way:

           0      string   MZ
           >0x18  leshort  <0x40   MS-DOS executable
           >0x18  leshort  >0x3f   extended PC executable (e.g., MS Windows)

     Offsets do not need to be constant, but can also be read from the file
     being examined.  If the first character following the last > is a ( then
     the string after the parenthesis is interpreted as an indirect offset.
     That means that the number after the parenthesis is used as an offset in
     the file.  The value at that offset is read, and is used again as an off-
     set in the file.  Indirect offsets are of the form: (( x
     [[.,][bBcCeEfFgGhHiIlmsSqQ]][+-][ y ]).  The value of x is used as an
     offset in the file.  A byte, id3 length, short or long is read at that
     offset depending on the [bBcCeEfFgGhHiIlmsSqQ] type specifier.  The value
     is treated as signed if "", is specified or unsigned if "".  is speci-
     fied.  The capitalized types interpret the number as a big endian value,
     whereas the small letter versions interpret the number as a little endian
     value; the m type interprets the number as a middle endian (PDP-11)
     value.  To that number the value of y is added and the result is used as
     an offset in the file.  The default type if one is not specified is long.
     The following types are recognized:

           Type    Sy Mnemonic   Sy Endian Sy Size
           bcBc    Byte/Char     N/A       1
           efg     Double        Little    8
           EFG     Double        Big       8
           hs      Half/Short    Little    2
           HS      Half/Short    Big       2
           i       ID3           Little    4
           I       ID3           Big       4
           m       Middle        Middle    4
           q       Quad          Little    8
           Q       Quad          Big       8

     That way variable length structures can be examined:

           # MS Windows executables are also valid MS-DOS executables
           0           string  MZ
           >0x18       leshort <0x40   MZ executable (MS-DOS)
           # skip the whole block below if it is not an extended executable
           >0x18       leshort >0x3f
           >>(0x3c.l)  string  PE\0\0  PE executable (MS-Windows)
           >>(0x3c.l)  string  LX\0\0  LX executable (OS/2)

     This strategy of examining has a drawback: you must make sure that you
     eventually print something, or users may get empty output (such as when
     there is neither PE\0\0 nor LE\0\0 in the above example).

     If this indirect offset cannot be used directly, simple calculations are
     possible: appending [+-*/%&|^]number inside parentheses allows one to
     modify the value read from the file before it is used as an offset:

           # MS Windows executables are also valid MS-DOS executables
           0           string  MZ
           # sometimes, the value at 0x18 is less that 0x40 but there's still an
           # extended executable, simply appended to the file
           >0x18       leshort <0x40
           >>(4.s*512) leshort 0x014c  COFF executable (MS-DOS, DJGPP)
           >>(4.s*512) leshort !0x014c MZ executable (MS-DOS)

     Sometimes you do not know the exact offset as this depends on the length
     or position (when indirection was used before) of preceding fields.  You
     can specify an offset relative to the end of the last up-level field us-
     ing '&' as a prefix to the offset:

           0           string  MZ
           >0x18       leshort >0x3f
           >>(0x3c.l)  string  PE\0\0    PE executable (MS-Windows)
           # immediately following the PE signature is the CPU type
           >>>&0       leshort 0x14c     for Intel 80386
           >>>&0       leshort 0x184     for DEC Alpha

     Indirect and relative offsets can be combined:

           0             string  MZ
           >0x18         leshort <0x40
           >>(4.s*512)   leshort !0x014c MZ executable (MS-DOS)
           # if it's not COFF, go back 512 bytes and add the offset taken
           # from byte 2/3, which is yet another way of finding the start
           # of the extended executable
           >>>&(2.s-514) string  LE      LE executable (MS Windows VxD driver)

     Or the other way around:

           0                 string  MZ
           >0x18             leshort >0x3f
           >>(0x3c.l)        string  LE\0\0  LE executable (MS-Windows)
           # at offset 0x80 (-4, since relative offsets start at the end
           # of the up-level match) inside the LE header, we find the absolute
           # offset to the code area, where we look for a specific signature
           >>>(&0x7c.l+0x26) string  UPX     \b, UPX compressed

     Or even both!

           0                string  MZ
           >0x18            leshort >0x3f
           >>(0x3c.l)       string  LE\0\0 LE executable (MS-Windows)
           # at offset 0x58 inside the LE header, we find the relative offset
           # to a data area where we look for a specific signature
           >>>&(&0x54.l-3)  string  UNACE  \b, ACE self-extracting archive

     If you have to deal with offset/length pairs in your file, even the sec-
     ond value in a parenthesized expression can be taken from the file it-
     self, using another set of parentheses.  Note that this additional indi-
     rect offset is always relative to the start of the main indirect offset.

           0                 string       MZ
           >0x18             leshort      >0x3f
           >>(0x3c.l)        string       PE\0\0 PE executable (MS-Windows)
           # search for the PE section called ".idata"...
           >>>&0xf4          search/0x140 .idata
           # ...and go to the end of it, calculated from start+length;
           # these are located 14 and 10 bytes after the section name
           >>>>(&0xe.l+(-4)) string       PK\3\4 \b, ZIP self-extracting archive

     If you have a list of known values at a particular continuation level,
     and you want to provide a switch-like default case:

           # clear that continuation level match
           >18     clear
           >18     lelong  1       one
           >18     lelong  2       two
           >18     default x
           # print default match
           >>18    lelong  x       unmatched 0x%x

SEE ALSO
     file(1) - the command that reads this file.

BUGS
     The formats long, belong, lelong, melong, short, beshort, and leshort do
     not depend on the length of the C data types short and long on the plat-
     form, even though the Single UNIX Specification implies that they do.
     However, as OS X Mountain Lion has passed the Single UNIX Specification
     validation suite, and supplies a version of file(1) in which they do not
     depend on the sizes of the C data types and that is built for a 64-bit
     environment in which long is 8 bytes rather than 4 bytes, presumably the
     validation suite does not test whether, for example long refers to an
     item with the same size as the C data type long.  There should probably
     be type names int8, uint8, int16, uint16, int32, uint32, int64, and
     uint64, and specified-byte-order variants of them, to make it clearer
     that those types have specified widths.

BSD                            January 21, 2019                            BSD
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