Re: Why file content sniffing sucks

[iain <iain prettypeople org>]

On Wed, 2003-12-24 at 10:59 -0500, Pat Smith wrote:

>   As a long time Gnome user, I kind of question the need for forcing
> what should be an optional feature on the user base. 

Why should it be an optional feature?
[ ] Use really broken file identification based on extension type that
can never be fixed
[ ] Use file identification based on contents of file that can be fixed
by tweaking algorithm

Hmmm, great options there.
How do you ID the following files
"README"
"wine"
"my-sexy-picture.jpg"

Hmmm, dunno, dunno, oh jpg...whoops, no, it was an executable trojan
renamed to a jpg to trick me into running it.

Short less facetious answer: File content sniffing is less broken than
any other method of IDing a filetype, and if it is broken, then the
algorithm needs tweaking to make it better. It is not an "optional
feature" and doesn't need to be.

iain
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