binary vs. text?

[Mark Schonewille]

Chris,

When you import a file, you always want to do something with its  
contents. Just check to see if the text contents fits the  
destination. If not, it might be a binary file and you may need to  
handle it differently.

There is another way. You could do a guess about the percentage of  
spaces, returns, and alphanumerical characters in a normal text file  
(nearly 100%) and in a binary file (significantly less). In those  
cases that the actual percentage is lower than some treshold value,  
assume it is a binary file. If the actual percentage is higher,  
assume it is a text file. If the actual percentage is approximately  
equal to the treshold value, ask the user.

You can store a copy of (a part of) the data in another variable, use  
replaceText to remove all non-alfanumerical characters and calculate  
the percentage. If you have a really large file, you don't need to  
analyse the entire file.

Best,

Mark

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Op 11-dec-2006, om 23:09 heeft Chris Sheffield het volgende geschreven:

> Does anyone have a sure fire way to determine if a file is binary  
> or text?
>
> I have need to create an import utility that will import data from  
> a text file (csv, tab-delimited, etc) into a database, but I'd like  
> to check the file before doing anything else just to make sure it  
> is in fact text and not binary.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Chris