This function attempts to determine if file is binary or text. It does this
using a heuristic based on finding at least nbin ASCII control
(i.e., non-printing) characters in the first nchars of the file.
This works well for standard ASCII text, but I have no idea how it will
work with complex UTF8 text (e.g., Chinese).
is.file.binary(file, bin.chars = c(1:8, 14:25), nchars = 1000, nbin = 2)The path to the file to be examined
List of control characters that are to be considered when when looking for signs a file is binary. Default includes most ASCII control characters except things like NULL, LF, CR and HT that might actually appear in an ASCII file.
Number of bytes to read in from the beginning of the file.
An integer indicating the threshold on the number of control characters above which a file is considered binary. Defaults to 2.
A boolean that will be TRUE if a file is considered to be binary.