Debian comes with a utility that can guess at the contents of a file
for you. Although it is not 100% accurate, you can use the following
command to explore your system:
$ file /bin/cp
You should see something like this:
/bin/cp: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 386, version 1
/
/
/
/
Skipping the technical parts, this is an executable file for Intel
machines.
$ file /etc/init.d/boot
The preceding command gives this response:
/etc/init.d/boot: Bourne shell script text
/
/
/
/
meaning that this is a text file containing a Bourne shell script.