OpenEuphoria

Re: binary files ,kudos,RE:new to this

• Posted by dubetyrant at hotmail.com Jan 28, 2003
• 397 views

Wow,that opens up a whole new world, so thats how these guys make
programs which can read and/or accept different file types? By
understanding how different file types are organized?Unreal.That is
awesome.Thanks for the education!
                           JDUBE

>
>Strictly speaking a 'binary' file is one that contains non-text characters. 
>Generally, files can be classified as either text or binary. Text files 
>contain only text characters (alphabetic, digits, punctuation, and some 
>special text chars such as TAB, NEWLINE and CARRIGE-RETURN (about 100 or so 
>of the possible 256 different bytes values). Text files are internally 
>organized into lines of text. A line is defined as all the characters up to 
>and including the end-of-line marker. In Microsoft world the end-of-line is 
>a two-byte sequence of CARRIAGE-RETURN and NEWLINE (#0D0A) but in the unix 
>world the EOL is just a single NEWLINE (#0A) byte. Binary files can contain 
>all 256 byte values and their internal structure can be anything at all. In 
>order to understand the contents of a binary file, you need to know its 
>structure first. Examples of binary files are bitmaps (.BMP), music (.MP3) 
>and executable programs (.EXE). Each of these has a structure which is 
>documented and you must use this to understand their contents. Have a look 
>at http://www.wotsit.org for a list of standard binary file formats.
>
>--
>
>cheers,
>Derek Parnell
>
>
>
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