How to enable command `file` in busybox's applet?

[Jeff Pohlmeyer]

On Aug 7, 2025 Ahmad Gani wrote:

> I tried building BusyBox from source, but when I run ./busybox file, it says:
> file: applet not found
> How can I enable it?

The problem with including something like that in busybox is not so
much the size of the program itself, but the size of the database
required for understanding all the different file types. For example,
on my Artix Linux system, the /usr/bin/file binary is only 31 kb, but
the  /usr/share/file/misc/magic.mgc database is nearly 10 MB. Many
years ago I ran across a much smaller program with a fairly useful
subset of file's functionality but I can't remember the name, and
"file" is such a generic term that google isn't much help either.

-- Jeff