Re: Reading binary/hex files (Delphi loadfromfile option?)

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Posted by webmaster Guido on January 22, 2004 at 15:43:32:

In Reply to: Reading binary/hex files (Delphi loadfromfile option?) posted by Ashraf El-Sayed on January 19, 2004 at 13:56:33:

: Hello again. I need to display the entries of a hex file I have. When using the normal text files, I usually create a listbox, then use the "LoadFromFile" option to copy the strings into the listbox.items. Is there a similar Delphi procedure for reading/loading hex files? Thanks!
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No, there is no similar Delphi procedure for reading hex files, in fact "binary files".

In fact, you can use LoadFromFile to read *any* type of file, but this is useless if it isn't a text file for two reasons:

1. LoadFromFile reads text "lines" into items, a line ending with a CR/LF (carriage return/ line feed) code. In a binary file, there might not be any CR/LF or maybe just one in every so many thousand bytes.

2. If you display the data in a listbox or a memo component, every byte is translated to it's corresponding ASCII character, which would give you a strange mix of unreadable stuff, not the hex-codes.

How to proceed then? In pseudo code:

Open the file
Until the end-of-file 
  Read a byte
  Translate the byte into its hexcode
  Add to a temporary string
  If tempstring has desired length (8,16,...) then
    Add tempstring to listbox, afterwards clear tempstring
If tempstring is not empty then 
  Add tempstring to listbox


Close the file

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