title: A hint for end of ASCII data in a binary file
body: <p>I'm developing a software that stores its data in a binary file format. However, as a courtesy to innocent shell users that might <code>cat</code> to inspect the contents of such a file, I'm thinking of having an ASCII-compatible "magic string" in the start of the file that tells the name and the version of the binary format.</p>
  
  <p>I'm thinking of having at least ten rows (<code>\n</code>) in the message so that <code>head</code> by default settings doesn't hit the binary part.</p>
  
  <p>Now, I wonder if there is any control character or escape code that would hint to the shell that the following content isn't interpretable as printable text, and should be just ignored? I tried <code>0x00</code> (the null byte) and <code>0x04</code> (ctrl-D) but they seem to be just ignored when <code>cat</code>ting the file.</p>