Hi

I am currently using the file command to detect the file type of a number of documents I have, including ODT, PDF and MSWord to name but a few. Additionally this list of files has no extension and so I must go on the file type alone to work out which file is of what type.

I can use the file command successfully to obtain the human readable file type;
e.g. ODT = OpenDocument Text, PDF = PDF Document, version ..., DOC = MS Office Document but when I specify the --mime flag I get alternative values. For ODT = OpenDocument Text = application/x-zip but it should really be application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text or so I can see in the /usr/share/file/magic file. I have had the same problem with multimedia files as well, especially video where I get the correct human readable type every time but the mime type is nearly always reported as application/octet-stream.

The reason I need the mime type is that I would like to stream some of these documents to a client's web browser and I need to tell the browser the MIME type of the file.

$ file --version reports the following
file-4.17
magic file from /etc/magic:/usr/share/file/magic

Is there some way I can get the correct MIME type? Should I be using file or is there another command I should be using? Any help would be much appreciated.