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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-NZ link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Hi Eric<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I’d suggest using memory mapped files so you can just treat the entire file contents as a block of memory and scan through it with normal pointer operations. Look up CreateFileMapping and MapViewOfFile in the Windows API.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Cheers,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'> Paul.. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> delphi-bounces@listserver.123.net.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces@listserver.123.net.nz] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Eric A<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, 5 November 2012 9:08 a.m.<br><b>To:</b> Delphi ListServer<br><b>Subject:</b> [DUG] Reading Different Types from a Binary File<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>This is probably a no-brainer to most of the DUG members, especially those used to pointers ...<br><br>I need to read and extract data from a binary file which comprises:<br>- a header with character type strings, each terminated by CR LF (not nulls)<br>- binary data area with a mixture of byte types, word types and double word types<br>- a file terminator of 0xFFFF hex<br><br>The files are not huge, less than 500KB, as the structure originates from old memory-constrained microprocessors of the 80's.<br><br>The header looks like it is based on the old INI file format and is of the form:<br><br>[Header]<br>Created=1349233072<br>Title=<br>Type=D<br>Version=162<br>[End]<br><br>The binary data area follows next. It comprises different types of data blocks, with sub blocks, each of which contains either bytes, words or double words of data in a pre-defined pattern or structure depending on the type of data block.<br><br>I can read the file into a buffer (array of Char) but I currently have a chunk of somewhat ugly code to parse the header and find the start position of the binary data after the '[End] CR LF' string. After that I need to extract data of various types depending on the specified datablock types, which I though I might have to use pointers for.<br><br>What's the best approach for <br>a) Extracting the header strings - is there a Delphi function to extract CR LF terminated character sequences as strings and maintain a pointer to the end of the string?<br>b) Creating functions for ReadByte, ReadWord, ReadDoubleWord and incrementing the pointer appropriately in each case ?<br><br><br>Eric<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>