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    Just remember, depending on your file, that you might miss some text formats: application/xml (and similar like RSS), application/ecmascript, application/json, image/svg+xml, ... You'd have to whitelist those. Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 7:38
  • @Boldewyn wow, nice examples! So probably a better answer is just to accept any file that has only printable chars, but somehow also cope with utf-8 and similar encoding problems. Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 7:49
  • Yes, that's the gist of my answer below. Only problem is, that that solution has to look at the whole file... Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 8:19
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    @Boldewyn In principle, application/* types are not intended for human consumption, even when they may be text-based to facilitate development and debugging. That's why there is both a text/xml and an application/xml. So the question whether to consider them as text depends on the OP's needs. Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 8:46
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    Or cut -d/ -f1 Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 9:07