List ASCII text files

Question

I want to list and sort all the files in a directory that are ASCII text files but don't necessarily have a .txt extension. How can I do this? I'm new to shell scripting.

Answer 1

Using file command:

#!/bin/bash
for i in * # for every file in folder
do
  # if file reports "ASCII text"
  if file "$i" | grep --quiet 'ASCII text$'
  then
      # print filename
      echo "$i"
  fi
done

One liner:

$ for i in *; do if file "$i" | grep -q 'ASCII text$' ; then echo "$i"; fi; done