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There are too many issues with MIME types on different operating systems, different applications saving files differently, some files not having a MIME at all, and lastly, the fact that the extension and MIME could be altered by a malicious user or program.
For detecting MIME-types, use the aptly named "mimetype" command. It has a number of options for formatting the output, it even has an option for backward compatibility to "file". But most of all, it accepts input not only as file, but also via stdin/pipe, so you can avoid temporary files when processing streams.
A multipurpose internet mail extension, or MIME type, is an internet standard that describes the contents of internet files based on their natures and formats. This cataloging helps the browser open the file with the appropriate extension or plugin.
The least specific official MIME type is application/octet-stream. Without any additional information, it says "here is a bunch of bytes, hopefully there is an application over on your end which knows what to do with them". Sometimes there is a file name which helps convey to the recipient what to do with the data.
"unknown" doesn't really add anything over this, except to confuse clients who don't support random unofficial MIME types. Ditto for application/binary; it's just a non-standard way of restating "octet-stream".
This is the answer to "What can I put in the Content-Type: header if I can't find an existing content type which adequately describes my data?" which is how I have interpreted this question. The proposed duplicate Unknown file type MIME? has a lengthy answer which discusses "How is my data interpreted if I don't put a valid Content-Type: header?" specifically in an HTTP context; the answer to that is protocol-specific (in email, for example, the default implied Content-Type: for MIME body parts which do not contain this header is text/plain; charset="us-ascii").
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