I'm looking for a way to open a .cat file. I have not a single clue about how to do it (I've tried with the notepad and sublime text, without results), the only thing I know is that it's not corrupted (it's read by another program, but I need to see it with my eyes to understand the structure of the content and create a similar one for my purposes).
Every hint is well accepted.
If you can't make sense of it in a standard text editor, it's probably a binary format.
If so, you need to get yourself a program capable of doing hex dumps (such as od) and prepare for some detailed analysis.
A good start would be trying to find information about Advanced Disk Catalog somewhere on the web, assuming that's what it is.
Related
I am not a developer so please bear with me with some basic questions.
There is a website where you can fill in a client data form on the site and then export it as a ISO-8859-1 coded file. You can also import ISO-8859-1 coded files there.
I on the other hand have client data in excel in CSV format.
What I would like to do is convert my CSV file in to the ISO encoded format so I can upload my client data files on the site without having to manually type in the form.
I have basic understanding of CSV files, but as I said im not a developer. First I thought I could open the ISO file in excel, just change the data in right columns, save and upload the file but it seems some of the data is indeed coded and not readable.
Is there some relatively easy way to learn how to do this (meaning for a non-coder putting a few hours of learning behind it)?
If yes, roughly where should I start looking, is there some kind of encoding programs I need to download, does Excel offer some kind of funcionality for this?
If no, meaning I would basically need to learn to program, where should I look to find a person who can do this? I guess it's very easy for someone who knows what they are doing? Any specific skills the person needs to have or is it basic programming question regardless of languages?
Thankful for any help, Vilho
I often come across the situation where I would like to read a file's original content in a human-readable way. When opening this kind of file in a text editor, why is it that it is usually gibberish with some complete and comprehensible text ? I would think that if the file is converted to something other than it's original written format, that there would be no comprehensible text remaining, yet I often find it is somewhere in between.
For example, I know that if I open a binary in a text format, there will be nothing comprehensible left that isn't purely accidental.
Example screencapture of partial gibberish text
Why is there complete text in here mixed with gibberish? Does that mean if I open the file with some sort of different encoding (I don't know what's possible), the file will come through as fully readable text? I would understand if it were all-or-nothing (either gibberish-non-readable OR human language) but I don't understand the in-between.
Please provide educational responses, rather than "because that's the way it is" type answers.
Those are formatting characters; there is no standard use and vary by the format of the file in question. You can still extract the text as needed with a fair knowledge of grep and regex, but it won't be fun. The best bet is to open the file with the software that can read it properly, as a text editor like gedit or Notepad++ will read the raw data and display that. Adobe's pdf format has text embedded, for instance, and all that gibberish is instructions for the Reader software for displaying it correctly on the screen while still allowing for relatively straightforward text extraction when required.
Editors have no real way to interpret the special formatting characters, and would need to be loaded with APIs for every conceivable program. They would also need to be updated constantly, since the formatting changes regularly for a variety of reasons. Many times, it is just to keep the files from being backward compatible with their own or other products, forcing an upgrade path. Microsoft is rather famous for that, but they are by far not the only company to do so.
I'm not sure I'm asking this in the right place, but I've been working with LiveCode and I'm curious how the actual .livecode or .rev files get created. They look like some sort of mixed binary and LiveCode format. I've glanced through the source code, but it's not clear to me how the files are constructed.
Note that I'm talking about the project containers, not the standalones.
I'm also not sure that this is the right place to ask. It isn't really a programming question, even though it is related. I think that the stackfile format is binary, but parts appear in clear text because that's what they are. Everything that is unrecognisable can be two things. It can be a definition of a byte range, or it can be the description of the stack, card or control itself. This description can contain user data, including clear text, but also movie data, picture data, a unicode stream, etc. Encrypted stacks appear as binary data.
I would ask this question directly to RunRev...
To find out what happens when the file is saved, you have to look at the C++ functions inside the Livecode engine when the savestack message is sent and handled.
No other way to tell, so you have to ask those familiar with the innards of the engine.
I am developing a game in j2me. How to handle images in .dat format.
I downloaded some games and extracted jar , found some dat format images and not able to open that images and images size also very less.. what tools I need to use?
Ref link
enter link description here
Not able to find solution?
A dat file could be anything. Depends what the developer felt like doing.
Some developers chose to strip PNG files of their header, and added the header back in the code. This was partly done in order to save a few bytes (because they mattered back then), and partly because of the challenge in doing it like that, and partly because it ensured all images used the exact same palette.
So that's one possibility, but it really could be anything.
As stated by mr_lou, there really isn't anything special about a .dat extension.
The steps to re-compile a file usually start with opening the file up in a hex editor and then looking at the first bits of information in the file. You then basically work from there to re-compile the data necessary for a 'normal' program to interpret the file. In particular, the first 8-16 bytes are often very helpful for determining what type of file it is "supposed" to be.
If you are looking at a png file (that's what I usually prefer to use for art assets) then you can reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics to see how a 'normal' png might look. When you're tweaking to save bytes you often strip unnecessary fields from png headers (things like the ancillary chunks) and using a common palette.
However, remember that it's not necessarily image data. It could be things like level data, sound, default stats or any particular amount of stuff.
I'm trying to create a program that moves a little man forward by walking or running etc.
I need to be able to save the state of the little man and load it at any given time and I have no idea how to do this. Could anyone please help me get the ball rolling?
You will probably have the state (the position of the character, maybe something else) stored in some sort of Python data structures. You could create a file storing this information. The most obvious ways are:
Create a plain-text file with text/numbers needed to recreate the state. You will need to parse it to load the state, but you can choose any file format you like.
Use pickle to dump your Python objects to a file directly. You will then read them using pickle.load and won't have to bother parsing the file.