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I still don't see how this is useful. The only time I want to answer the question "what type of file is this" is if it is an opaque blob of binary data. If it's a plain text file like Python, HTML, or JSON, I can figure that out by just catting the file.

file (https://www.darwinsys.com/file/) already detects all these formats.

Indeed but as pointed out in the blog post -- file is significantly less accurate that Magika. There are also some file type that we support and file doesn't as reported in the table.

I can't immediately find the dataset used for benchmarking. Is file actually failing on common files or just particularly nasty examples? If it's the latter then how does it compare to Magika on files that an average person is likely to see?

> Is file actually failing on common files or just particularly nasty examples? If it's the latter then how does it compare to Magika on files that an average person is likely to see?

That's not the point in file type guessing is it? Google employs it as an additional security measure for user submitted content which absolutely makes sense given what malware devs do with file types.

Yes, but shouldn't the file type be part of the file, or (better) of the metadata of the file?

Knowing is better than guessing.