The following information is meant to document the histogram representations of characters typically found in different file types. Please let me know if there are any other files that you think should be added to those represented here. Each image is proceeded with of the name of the file graphed and the results of the Linux file command.
The following scripts were used to generate these images.
- file_histograms.py – this script can be run on Windows or Linux as long as you have the proper requirements. This script requires MatPlotLib and was built on a Windows XP system using Python(x,y). Usage: python file_histograms.py file <optional title>
- Windows EXE – this is a zipped file that contains an executable that was create using PY2EXE. This executable needs to be run from the command line. This should be self contained although there are a few Windows System DLLs that could not be included and must be present on your system. One disadvantage of using this vice the python script is that not all of the Window options (Zoom, Save, etc) are available when viewing a graph. Usage: dist\file_histograms.exe file <optional title>
gif_hist.gif: GIF image data, version 89a, 500 x 332
jpeg_hist.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.02
marines_hymn.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 23.0 tag, MP3 encoding
ms_word.doc: Microsoft Office Document
ms_word.pdf: PDF document, version 1.4
ms_word.txt: Unicode text, UTF-8
pics.tar.bz2: bzip2 compressed data, block size = 900k
pics.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, was “3cqz2a.tar”, from Unix, last modified: Sun Dec 21 14:39:46 2008
pics.zip: Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract
pics.zip.gpg: data
RvBre_Trailer_HiRes.mp4: ISO Media, MPEG v4 system, version 2
RvBre_Trailer_HiRes.wmv: Microsoft ASF
SuperScan4.exe: MS-DOS executable PE for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit, UPX compressed
tiff_hist.tiff: TIFF image data, little-endian
Truecrypt_file: data
wipe: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
Go forth and do good things,
Don C. Weber