Determining a characteristic of a configuration file that is used to discover configuration files in a target machine, a computer identifies, using information associated with a configuration item of a machine, a candidate configuration file related to the configuration item of the machine, from among a plurality of files from the machine. The computer extracts a value of a feature of the candidate configuration file and aggregates the candidate configuration file with a second candidate configuration file related to the same configuration item identified from among a plurality of files from a second machine, based on the extracted value. The computer then determines a configuration file related to the configuration item from among the aggregated candidate configuration files based on a result of the aggregation, and determines a characteristic of the configuration file related to the configuration item.