So I know about ls, and I know I can do ls -l to see if a file is executable, but that can be a little misleading. I also know that I can do ls --color=always to get a colour representation of the directory. However what I am looking for is a clear way to tell in advance if a file is 'binary' (in the sense that the contents cannot be read by something like a pager, I know that text files are binary too).
I'll give you an example incase you are confused.
In /boot we have the efi files which are marked as executables, so it is easy to avoid these. I know I cannot read these with a pager. But I also cannot read boot0, boot1, boot2, etc because these 'may' be binary files according to less. I'm finding it quite hard to navigate the file system, because some are marked clearly and others are not. (For example a 4th file or lua file will obviously be human readable, but others tell me nothing and have no executable flag).
Is there an easy way to see which files in a directory are human readable?
I'll give you an example incase you are confused.
In /boot we have the efi files which are marked as executables, so it is easy to avoid these. I know I cannot read these with a pager. But I also cannot read boot0, boot1, boot2, etc because these 'may' be binary files according to less. I'm finding it quite hard to navigate the file system, because some are marked clearly and others are not. (For example a 4th file or lua file will obviously be human readable, but others tell me nothing and have no executable flag).
Is there an easy way to see which files in a directory are human readable?