REGFILETYPE(1)

✨ REGFILETYPE ✨

okay bestie, welcome to regfiletype from The Regina Handbook — this is the lil' detective that sniffs out what format your Regina data files are in 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

regfiletype — figure out the formats of Regina data files, no cap 🔍

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

regfiletype file ...

regfiletype { -v, --version | -?, --help }

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically this utility tells you which file format a given Regina data file is in. you can hand it a whole lil' lineup of files on the command line — pass as many as you want — and the format of each one gets written out to standard output. one by one, slay ✨

important vibe check though: only Regina's modern XML-based file formats get recognised — and yes, that includes both the compressed ones and the uncompressed ones, we love range 🫶

now for the lore 😭 back in its very early years, Regina used an impenetrable and undocumented binary format. like, genuinely unreadable. that whole thing got replaced with XML in 2002 (that's Regina 3.0), and support for the old binary format was removed completely in 2013 (that's Regina 4.94).

so if you still need to recognise and/or read files in this ancient binary format?? you're gonna have to download Regina 4.93. that's the only way, fr fr 💀

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -v, --version — shows you which version of Regina is being used, then exits immediately. like, no further questions, it's outtie ✌️
• -?, --help — displays brief usage information, then exits immediately. the quick lil' cheat sheet 🎀

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🍓 MACOS USERS 🍓

if you downloaded a drag-and-drop app bundle, this utility is shipped inside it — it's living in there, nestled up 🥺

if you dragged Regina to the main Applications folder, you can run it like this:

/Applications/Regina.app/Contents/MacOS/regfiletype

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🌈 WINDOWS USERS 🌈

the command-line utilities are installed beneath the Program Files directory — and on some machines this directory is called Program Files (x86), just so you know 👑

you can start this utility by running:

c:\Program Files\Regina\Regina 7.4.1\bin\regfiletype.exe

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

regconvert, regina-gui — go give them a lil' visit too, iykyk 💜

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

this utility was written by Benjamin Burton <bab@maths.uq.edu.au> ✨ and honestly? many people have been involved in the development of Regina — see the users' handbook for the full list of credits, they all ate 🌟

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and that's the whole page bestie 🫶 this was the REGFILETYPE(1) page from The Regina Handbook, dated 25 August 2025 — iconic, no notes 💅🌸