How to Check if File is ASCII or Binary in PHP

Question

Is there a quick, simple way to check if a file is ASCII or binary with PHP?

Answer 1

This only works for PHP>=5.3.0, and isn't 100% reliable, but hey, it's pretty darn close.

// return mime type ala mimetype extension
$finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME);

//check to see if the mime-type starts with 'text'
return substr(finfo_file($finfo, $filename), 0, 4) == 'text';

http://us.php.net/manual/en/ref.fileinfo.php