The immediate purpose of the list is threefold:
1) To design an Internet registry for magic numbers, i.e. data stream
patterns describable in the language of file(1) comprising a de-facto
semantic file type system.
2) To develop an Internet RFC promulgating guidelines for choosing magic
numbers and defining standards for "magic-number-aware" programs based
on the registry.
3) To develop from file(1) a reference library of routines usable in
magic-number-aware programs.
Once the magic numbers RFC and the Magic Numbers Registry hve been developed,
the list may take on other challenges including extension of the file(1)
specification language to be able to get hints from filename patterns.
Charter members of this list are:
esr@ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond)
quinlan@pathname.com (Daniel Quinlan)
christos@deshaw (Christos Zoulas)
newt@uchicago.edu (Greg Roelofs)
Please acknowledge this note. A first hack at an RFC draft will go out as
soon as the ACKs are in.
-- <a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>