List of file signatures

This is a list of file signatures, data used to identify or verify the content of a file. Such signatures are also known as magic numbers.

Many file formats are not intended to be read as text. If such a file is accidentally viewed as a text file, its contents will be unintelligible. However, sometimes the file signature can be recognizable when interpreted as text. The column ISO 8859-1 shows how the file signature appears when interpreted as text in the common ISO 8859-1 encoding.

Windows Program Information File
Mac Stuffit Self-Extracting Archive
IRIS OCR data file

using Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm

using LZH algorithm

It typically is paired with an index file (idx) with the table of contents.

any