How to know if a file is a text file

[Nobody]

On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:49:54 +0100, Luca wrote:

> I was quite sure that this is not a very simple task. Right now search
> only inside ASCII encode is not enough for me (my native language is
> outside this encode :-)
> Checking every single byte can be a good solution...
> 
> I can start using the mimetype module and, if the file has no
> extension, check byte one by one (commonly) as "file" command does.
> Better: I can check use the "file" command if available.

Another possible solution:

	Universal Encoding Detector
	Character encoding auto-detection in Python 2 and 3

	http://chardet.feedparser.org/