this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[โ€“] dan@upvote.au 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The library that handles it is literally called "libmagic". I'd guess the phrase "magic bytes" comes from the programming concept of a magic number?

[โ€“] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I did not know about that one! It makes sense though, because a lot of headers would start with, well yeah, "magic numbers". Makes sense.