List of file signatures


 * 1) 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 or Magic Bytes.

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, some file signatures 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, with unprintable characters represented as the control code abbreviation or symbol, or codepage 1252 character where available, or a box otherwise. In some cases the space character is shown as ␠.