Proposed magic number patch

[John Cowan]

Olson, Arthur David wrote:

> Is there a "magic number registration authority" (or an equivalent) to
> be in touch with either before or after deciding on one?

De facto, the known magic numbers are those interpreted by the
Unix "file" command.  There is a freeware version of this, which
seems to be the latest, at ftp://ftp.deshaw.com/pub/file .

The authors will accept magic number information in "/etc/magic"
format, which they will propagate into the next
release.  A search of the current (3.22; January 1997)
version reveals no conflicts (no magic numbers with "TZ" in them).
The contact addresses given in the current version (3.22) are:

	Christos Zoulas <mailto:christos at deshaw.com>
	Mark Moraes <mailto:moraes at deshaw.com>

They want to get lines of the following form:

0	string	\x14\x1aTZ	compiled time zone information
0	string	\x89TZ\x0d\0x0a\x1a\x0a	compiled time zone information

I withdraw my proposal to insert a NUL into the magic number,
as this will cause "file" to malfunction.  When this list has
settled on a magic number, ADO can drop them the appropriate
line.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan at ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban