From Linux Man Pages
NAME
anytopnm - convert an arbitrary type of image file to PBM, PGM, or PPM
anytopnm [file]
This program is part of Netpbm(1).
anytopnm converts the input image, which may be in any of about 100 graphics formats, to PBM, PGM, or PPM format,
depending on that nature of the input image, and outputs it to Standard Output.
To determine the format of the input, anytopnm uses the file program (possibly assisted by the magic numbers file
fragment included with Netpbm). If that fails (very few image formats have magic numbers), anytopnm looks at the
filename extension. If that fails, anytopnm punts.
The type of the output file depends on the input image.
anytopnm uses the converters for particular graphics formats that are in the Netpbm package, so it can't convert
any format that you couldn't convert with some other Netpbm program. What anytopnm adds is the ability to recog-
nize the format and choose the appropriate Netpbm program to convert it. For example, if you invoke anytopnm on
a PNG file, anytopnm will recognize that it is a PNG file and therefore pngtopnm knows how to convert it to PNM,
so anytopnm invokes pngtopnm.
anytopnm cannot recognize every possible input format, so you may still be able to convert an image with a spe-
cific Netpbm program when anytopnm fails to convert it.
If file indicates that the input file is compressed (either via Unix compress, gzip, or bzip compression), any-
topnm uncompresses it and proceeds as above with the uncompressed result.
If file indicates that the input file is encoded by uuencode or btoa, anytopnm decodes it and proceeds as above
with the decoded result.
If file is - or not given, anytopnm takes its input from Standard Input.
pamfile(1), pnm(1), file man page
Copyright (C) 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.
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