mime_type: Type files from their bytes and their names

In zumime: Media Type Detection from Bytes and File Names

Type files from their bytes and their names

Description

Reads the first bytes of each path in one C loop, types them as mime_sniff() does, guesses a type from the name as mime_guess() does, and says whether the two agree. The other columns answer what a consumer asks before opening a file: what a compressed file holds, whether it is encrypted or truncated, its line endings, and a script's interpreter.

Usage

mime_type(
  path,
  limit = 4096L,
  complete = FALSE,
  inner = c("name", "decompress"),
  text = c("whatwg", "family"),
  charset = c("declared", "detect"),
  strict = FALSE
)

Arguments

path	A character vector of paths.
limit	The number of bytes to read from each file; 0 reads whole files.
complete	If TRUE, also read each file's end and fill complete. A ZIP needs its end-of-central-directory record. A PDF needs ⁠%%EOF⁠ in its last kilobyte. A gzip stream must inflate to its trailer. Parquet must end in PAR1. Other formats give NA. A PDF is encrypted when its trailer dictionary, found in the last 4 KB, names ⁠/Encrypt⁠.
inner	How to find the type inside a compression wrapper (gzip, bzip2, xz, zstd, LZ4, lzip, compress): "name" takes it from the rest of the name, so data.csv.gz holds text/csv; "decompress" decompresses gzip with zukomp and sniffs the result, falling back to the name for other wrappers and for files over 16 MiB.
text	"whatwg" keeps the standard's answer for text; "family" offers a still generic text/plain to the family's sniffers, which read whole files.
charset	"declared" reports the charset the bytes declare; "detect" asks zuutf where they declare none, or only the C1 guess.
strict	If TRUE, an unreadable path raises zumime_io_error.

Details

Unreadable and missing paths give a row with type NA and confidence "none", so one bad entry does not abort a scan of a tree. strict = TRUE raises zumime_io_error instead. A directory is inode/directory, and nothing is read from it.

agree is TRUE when the byte type and the name type lie on one lineage, so bytes that say text/plain agree with a .csv name and a ZIP agrees with a .docx name; FALSE when they differ, such as a PNG named .txt; and NA when either is unknown. A disagreement is a finding, not an error.

The default answer depends on nothing outside the package. Three arguments ask for an optional family package. inner = "decompress" uses zukomp and charset = "detect" uses zuutf; either raises zumime_dependency_error when its package is absent. text = "family" never raises: it uses whichever of zucsv, zujson and zutoml are installed, listed by zumime_info()$family, and with none it keeps the standard's answer. zuutf and zutoml are not yet on CRAN; install them from GitHub. An error inside an optional package leaves that answer as it was, so a corrupt stream keeps the name's inner.

Value

A zumime_result data frame with one row per path and columns path, type, confidence, charset, by_name, agree, inner, encrypted, complete, newline and interpreter.

See Also

mime_sniff() for bytes and the standard's contexts, mime_check() for an allowlist.

Examples

dir <- tempfile()
dir.create(dir)
writeLines(c("a,b", "1,2"), file.path(dir, "data.csv"))
saveRDS(mtcars, file.path(dir, "cars.rds"))
writeBin(
  as.raw(c(0x89, 0x50, 0x4e, 0x47, 0x0d, 0x0a, 0x1a, 0x0a)),
  file.path(dir, "logo.txt")
)
mime_type(list.files(dir, full.names = TRUE))
unlink(dir, recursive = TRUE)

zumime documentation built on Nov. 12, 2026, 1:07 a.m.