I have a file that holds manufacturing orders for a machine.
I would like to read the content of this file and edit it, but when I open it in a text editor i.e. Notepad++, I get a bunch of wierd charecters:
xÚ¥—_HSQÀo«a)’êaAXŽâê×pD8R‰¬©s“i+ƒ´#¡$
-þl-ó/ÓíºIúPôàƒHˆP–%a&RÎÈn÷ü¹·;Ú;ç<ìòÝÃý}¿ó}‡{϶«rWg>˜›ãR‡)Çn0³Ûf³yÎW[5–šw½ÇRW{ñ’rO6¹ŽŸp¦ÙœcÏ.9yÀnýg
)Ë—e90ejÕø£rC. f¦}3ËŒ˜hü”å1g[…ø±ú ÜJøz®‹˜YfÈ,4`ŽKÉ—ù“ÔË¿d„þlG3#=˜Ž´+hF¬¦£€«šm¿áØ
ïÖµv‡ËpíÍ~™‡Aù
šëÈÚ]ÿç™DŒÉFØ ïƒæsij ¦y=-74Æ/t=ÕŠr\˜š»Âä‰Ý¨žã΢
dz·à‡'fœ½yâ½4qåPjácòÄŒeÊhñ“ý™ÙÎÕ÷5ôlñ=˜Õ{ú;ø=Û;4OêYä>Ìpxbæâ'è"oëB×1gQ9“'¹]Ô³’Ô³ø!ÌózÞyŸõžÓIŽù*&OÌXPÕ"ŽWžpíOÌè‚Þ3Òr0{Ž†R=_?…/¼žÞ0,ê=/?£ûÓËîy“2Z<ij³[ËÁì™÷–ôžÎ’Ããa÷<Maêéí…¼ž}©žYýZ-˜=”á¤}π＞3°¢÷œ$ïè‰3ìž«ƒÄs¿—xnŒÀ*¯gi$ÕómDËÁìùIeоû‡À¬?3°x¾"~ª§c˜öÝÇî颌°›x¾Fßb>Ï}QXÓ{öFi-êÙßóR”œe^Ñ÷ü‘¿g[Lë ŽwJZϘë¹3”³L©gH‚,^Ïe 2ôžWGøëÙ2‚Î
øœL¾ÅqÈäõ,ýç\œË3¾þeྗ&`Ϻ<KÒf“’»ðù]í‰ãžU^wèþåÔÖy”H}ò•6ø6
It looks like the file is encoded.
Any idea how to find the encoding and make the file readable and editable?
It's binary and probably encoded so without knowledge of data structure you can't do much - just reverse engineering based on trying and checking what changed, operating with hex editor.
It isn't impossible, tho. If you can change the data the way you know (eg. change number of orders from 1 to 2) and export to file, you can compare binary values and find which byte holds that number. Of course if it is encrypted and you don't know the key... It's easier to find another way.
For further read, check this out - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Reverse_Engineering/File_Formats
If you've got access to a Linux box why not use
hexdump -C <filename>
You will be able to get a much better insight into how the file is structured, than by using a text editor.
There are also many "hexdump" equivalent commands on Windows
Related
When writing to a binary file, when should I use .bin vs .dat? If I'm just trying to store information not meant to be read by humans, like item description/serial number pair, does it matter which one I pick if I'm just trying to make it unreadable from a text editor?
Let me give you some brief details about these files :
.BIN File : The BIN file type is primarily associated with 'Binary File'. Binary files are used for a wide variety of content and can be associated with a great many different programs. In general, a .BIN file will look like garbage when viewed in a file editor.
.DAT File : The DAT file type is primarily associated with 'Data'. Can be just about anything: text, graphic, or general binary data. Data file in special format or ASCII.
Reference:
Abhijit Banerjee answered that question on quora
.dat is a more frequently used suffix for binary data. It doesn't matter what extension you pick, as long as you are on Unix or Linux based systems.
Sufixes can mean whatever you want them to mean... Those rules are more like guidelines than actual rules...
However, BIN seems like a short to binary, so a BIN file will likely hold data in binary form. DAT seems like a short to data, so a DAT file will contain information in whatever format the developer of the program that reads that file seems fit (ASCII, Binary, a mix of them, something else entirely)
On a UNIX system, there is no difference. The extensions are interchangeable.
If you do not put any extension, it makes it kinda hard for someone not knowing what the file's extension should be, to open the file. Additionally, with Unix or Linux, if you place a dot (period) before the file name, the file hides itself.
I am making a c version of pacman and am keeping my highscores in a separate .txt file called highscores.txt. In the program, after the completion of a game, it checks to see if the highscores file should be updated and writes over it if it should. The high scores view within the program reads the scores and names from the file. The issue is that it is very easy for someone to simply edit the .txt file and say they got any score they wanted. Is there a way to make it so that the file can only be written on by the program? This is in a Linux Red Hat environment.
I'd say just encript the file, then rename it something obscure.
An easy way will be to gzip it, and name as a file called "data" or whatever, so people couldn't guess it's gzip.
This method is easy to break once you know gzip is used, so a more secure way is to encript it using an encription key internal in your code.
Your best option is probably encryption. A good, quick study on Encoding vs. Encrypting vs Hashing
You could also look at other ways of storing the data. For example, something like HSQLDB or SQLLite, where you can create databases that have usernames and passwords available.
SITUATION:
My instructor for my micro-controller class refuses to save sample code to a text file and instead saves it to a word document file instead. When I open up the doc file and copy/paste the code into my IDE "CodeWarrior" it causes errors upon compile time.
I am having to rewrite all the code into a text editor and then copy/paste it into my IDE.
MY UNDERSTANDING:
I was told to always save code as a text file because when you save code as a word document file it will bring in unwanted characters when your copy/pasting the code into your IDE for compiling.
MY QUESTIONS TO YOU:
1.)
Can someone explain this dilemma to me so I can understand it better? I would like to present a better case next time when I receive errors and to also know more about what is happening.
2.)
Is it possible to write a script that will show me all the characters that are being copied and pasted into a file when the code is coming from a word document vs. a text file? In otherwords is there a program that will allow me to see what is going on between copying/pasting code from a word doc file versus a txt file?
Saving source code as a Word document is just silly. If your instructor is insisting on this, chances are no matter how well-reasoned and thorough your argument, they're not going to listen. They're beyond help.
However, to answer your questions: 1) It depends on what you're pasting the thing into. Programs that copy onto the clipboard usually make the data available in several different formats, ranging from their own internal format to plain ASCII text, to maximize compatibility so that the data can be pasted into pretty much any target program. Most text editors will only accept the plan-text version, in which case no extra characters should be transferred. However if your text editor supports RTF or HTML, this may not be true. I'm not sure what CodeWarrior supports but it is certainly possible.
A workaround if this is the case: First paste into a PURE text editor like Notepad. Then copy from Notepad into CodeWarrior. This should eliminate any hidden formatting. As shoover said above, make sure double-quotes " are really double-quotes and not the fancy left- and right-specific quotes that Word sometimes uses.
Use a hex editor like XVI32 to see the raw contents of the file, including nonprinting characters. Or use a text editor with support for showing nonprinting characters (vi/vim, etc.).
I'm studying C and I've just had the same problem. When coping a piece of code from a PDF file and trying to compiling it, gcc would return a serie of errors. Reading the answer above I had an idea: "What if I converted the utf8 into ascii?". Well, I found a website that does just that (https://onlineutf8tools.com/convert-utf8-to-ascii). But instead of also converting the utf8 characters into ascii, it showed them as hexadecimals (Copying from the website to the text editor you can see it better). From there i realised that the problem were mostly the quote marks "".
I then copied the ascii "translation" into my code editor (I must add that it worked fine with Sublime, while VScode read the same utf8 code as it was in the original file, even after cp from the website) and replaced all the hex with the actual ascii characters that were needed to compile the code properly. I used the function find and replace from my editor to do it. I must say that it wasn't very fast doing it. But I believe that in some cases, if the code you're trying to copying is too long, doing it the way I've just described could be faster than rewriting the entire code.
I come to you completely stumped. I do some side work for a company that uses an old DOS based program to input and retrieve data. This is a legacy piece of software, and they have since moved to either QuickBooks or Outlook for all of their address or billing related needs. However there have been some changes made, and they work with this database fairly regularly. Since the computer that this software is on, is running XP (and none of the other computers in the office can run it) they're looking to phase this software out for when the computer inevitably explodes.
TLDR; I have an old .csv file (roughly two years) that has a good chunk of information on it, but again it's two years old. I have another file called ml.dat (I'm assuming masterlist.dat) that's in the same folder as this legacy software. I open it with notepad and excel and am presented with information like this:
S;Û).;PÃS;*p(â'a,µ,
The above chunk of text is recognized much less within notepad or excel. It's a lot more of the unrecognized squares.
Some of the information is actually readable however. I can for example read the occasional town name, or person's name but I'm unable to get all of the information since there's a lot missing. Perhaps the data isn't in unicode or something? I have no idea. Any suggestions? I'm ultimately trying to take this information and toss it into either quickbooks or outlook.
Please help!
Thanks
Edit: I'm guessing the file might be encrypted since .dat's are usually clear text? Any thoughts?
.DAT files can be anything, they are usually just application data. Since there is readable text, then it is very unlikely that this file is encrypted. Instead you are seeing ASCII representations of the bytes of other content. http://www.asciitable.com/ Assuming single byte values, the number 77 might appear in the file somewhere as M.
Your options:
Search for some utility to load and translate the dat file for that application.
Set up an appropriate dos emulator so you can run this application on another box, or even a virtual machine running freedos or something.
Figure out the file format and then write a program to translate the data.
For #3, you can attach a debugger to the application to trace how the file is read and written. Alternatively you can try to figure out record boundaries (if all the records are the same size, then things are a little bit easier.) Then you can use known values to try to find field boundaries. If you can find (or reverse compile) the source code, then that could also give you insight into the file format.
1 is your best bet, and #2 will buy you some time so that you don't need that original machine anymore. #3 would likely be something to outsource.
If you can find the source or file format, then you just recreate whatever data structure was dumped to the file and read the file into it.
To find which exe opens it, you can do something like:
for %f in (*.exe) do find "ml.dat" %f -c
Assuming the original application was written in C then there would be code something like this to read the first record from the file:
struct SecretData
{
int first;
double money;
char city[10];
};
FILE* input;
struct SecretData secretdata;
input = fopen("ml.dat", "rb");
fread(&data, sizeof(data), 1, input);
fclose(input);
(The file would have been written with fwrite.) Basically you need to figure out the innards of the SecretData structure to be able to read the file.
There likely wasn't a separate utility used to make the file, dumping data and reading it back from a file is relatively easy in most languages.
I am building a basic POS app for my cousin's pharmacy store so that he can dump the software he is currently using and save on license cost.All the medicines name which he has painfully entered into the software have been stored in a file with .d01 extension.
What i want is a way to read the contents of the .d01 file programmatically so that i can import the name of the medicines into my app.
The s/w from which my cousin uses is built in Foxpro(coz i see a lot of .cdx,.idx,.dbf files) and the file which i want to import is with .d01 extension. when i open the file in notepad it is something like this
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/5528/foxpro.jpg
So I assume its somekind of database table or something. So can anyone please help me in reading this file, as i am not at all aware of foxpro.
Thanks a lot in advance to all those who take out time to reply.
hey guys thank you very much for replying so promptly.. I tried the solution suggested by Otávio and it worked, i will now write a small utility to read the dbf.
It has a good chance of being just a regular .dbf file. Copy it somewhere safe, change the extension to dbf and see if you can open it from foxpro.
Although it may have .cdx files, the actual paste of the file does not appear to be a visually recognizable header format of a VFP table... even if part of a database container. The characters around each column name don't look right. It may be from another language that also utilized "Compound Indexes". I even saw an article about Sybase's IAnywhere too. If worst-case scenario, and it is determined to be a possible fixed-length per row and no dynamic column sizes, you might take the file, strip off what appears to be the header and leave just the data and stream read it in based on how many constant characters are determined for the length. yeah, brute force, but just an option. Again, it doesn't LOOK like a VFP table.
BTW, what is the name of the software he is using... I'd look into that to see if any other type of indication to its source.
It looks sort of like a DBF file - maybe Clipper or something.