Friday, April 18, 2014

MIME Types and Magic Numbers

MIME Types

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:
  • character sets other than ASCII
  • Non-text attachments
  • Message bodies with multiple parts
  • Header information in non-ASCII character sets

Magic Numbers

In computer programming, the term magic number has multiple meanings. It could refer to one or more of the following:
  • A constant numerical or text value used to identify a file format or protocol; for files, see List of file signatures
  • Distinctive unique values that are unlikely to be mistaken for other meanings (e.g., Globally Unique Identifiers)
  • Unique values with unexplained meaning or multiple occurrences which could (preferably) be replaced with named constants
How could a magic number be bad?

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