Re: magic numbers for GNU findutils locate database

[Christos Zoulas]

On Jan 24,  9:34am, address@hidden (James Youngman) wrote:
-- Subject: magic numbers for GNU findutils locate database

| Hello,
| 
| Here are the magic numbers for the database used by the "locate"
| program of GNU findutils.  The tests are compatible with the "file"
| command from ftp.astron.com, which is used in Debian GNU/Linux, among
| other places.
| 
| I'm not sure if my use of "\b" is legitimate, but it follows existing
| examples in the magic file.
| 
| 0     string  \0LOCATE        GNU findutils locate database data
| >7    string  >\0             \b, format %s
| >7    string  02              \b (frcode)
| 
| Eventually, later versions of GNU findutils may change the database
| format.  The format number is the two-digit string at offset 7, and so
| these magic numbers will continue to work with those.  
| 
| The "old" database format doesn't have any handy magic strings that I
| can see could be used to identify it, unfortunately.  However, I
| suspect that it is rarely used these days, except on systems that
| don't have GNU findutils at all.

Thanks a lot!

christos