Last updated on August 25, 2020 by Dan Nanni
A torrent file (i.e., a file with .torrent
extension) is a BitTorrent metadata file which stores information (e.g., tracker URLs, file list, sizes, checksums, creation date) needed by a BitTorrent client to download files shared on BitTorrent peer-to-peer networks. Inside a single torrent file, one or more files can be listed for sharing.
The content of a torrent file is encoded with BEncode, the BitTorrent's data serialization format. Thus to view the content of a torrent file, you need a corresponding decoder.
In fact, any GUI-based BitTorrent client (e.g., Transmission or uTorrent) is equipped with BEncode decoder, so can show to you the content of a torrent file by opening it. However, if you don't want to use any sort of BitTorrent client to check up on a torrent file, you can try a command-line torrent viewer called dumptorrent
.
The dumptorrent
command prints the detailed content of a torrent file (e.g., file names, sizes, tracker URLs, creation date, info hash, etc.) by using a built-in BEncode decoder.
To install dumptorrent
on Linux, you can build it from the source.
$ sudo apt-get install gcc make $ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/dumptorrent/dumptorrent/1.2/dumptorrent-1.2.tar.gz $ tar -xvf dumptorrent-1.2.tar.gz $ cd dumptorrent-1.2 $ make $ sudo cp dumptorrent /usr/local/bin
$ sudo yum install gcc make $ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/dumptorrent/dumptorrent/1.2/dumptorrent-1.2.tar.gz $ tar -xvf dumptorrent-1.2.tar.gz $ cd dumptorrent-1.2 $ make $ sudo cp dumptorrent /usr/local/bin
Make sure that /usr/local/bin
is included in your PATH
.
To check the content of a torrent, simply run dumptorrent
with a torrent file as an argument. This will print a summary of a torrent, including file names, sizes and tracker URL.
$ dumptorrent <torrent-file>
To view the full content of a torrent, add -v
option. This will print more detailed information of a torrent, including info-hash, piece length, creation date, creator, and full announce list.
$ dumptorrent -v <torrent-file>
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