Question

[Mark A. Odell]

Hello,
I am a beginner with the programming and I have some question. I am
reading manuals from Internet and some book from the library. In all
those documents the C language operate wint plain text files, and I want
to know how operate with formated files (msexcel, msaccess, mysql,
etc..). If it isn't possible with C, with C++ is possible?

It's possible with both languages. You need only open the file in binary
mode and read away. The hard part may be getting the binary file format
from the creator. Read up on fopen(), fread(), fwrite(), fseek(), ftell(),
and fclose().

 

[uno]

Hello,
I am a beginner with the programming and I have some question. I am
reading manuals from Internet and some book from the library. In all
those documents the C language operate wint plain text files, and I want
to know how operate with formated files (msexcel, msaccess, mysql,
etc..). If it isn't possible with C, with C++ is possible?
Thanks
a beginner
(P.D.- Sorry for my poor english)

 

[Thomas Matthews]

It's possible with both languages. You need only open the file in binary
mode and read away. The hard part may be getting the binary file format
from the creator. Read up on fopen(), fread(), fwrite(), fseek(), ftell(),
and fclose().

See also: http://www.wotsit.org


--
Thomas Matthews

C++ newsgroup welcome message:
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C++ Faq: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite
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alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ faq:
http://www.raos.demon.uk/acllc-c++/faq.html
Other sites:
http://www.josuttis.com -- C++ STL Library book

 

[Noah Roberts]

Hello,
I am a beginner with the programming and I have some question. I am
reading manuals from Internet and some book from the library. In all
those documents the C language operate wint plain text files, and I want
to know how operate with formated files (msexcel, msaccess, mysql,
etc..). If it isn't possible with C, with C++ is possible?
Thanks
a beginner
(P.D.- Sorry for my poor english)

Since your question is already answered I will only say that "Question"
is a poor subject for a help request. Something like "Binary file I/O
in C" would be better. Some people may even have filters to weed out
subjects like "help", "question", etc...

NR

 

[uno]

It's possible with both languages. You need only open the file in binary
mode and read away. The hard part may be getting the binary file format
from the creator. Read up on fopen(), fread(), fwrite(), fseek(), ftell(),
and fclose().

Sorry, but I don't understand it.
How example with a file make with msaccess (.mdb), I make a database, I
make tables and relations (with the MSAccess form Office) and when I
open it with notepad, the text is unintelligible.
Do you want to say what it can open files with differents format (for
..mdb one form, for .exe other form, etc.)?
I am reading fopen(), and I am looking to open a file in binary format,
but, this will understand the format of file?

thanks,
uno

 

[uno]

Since your question is already answered I will only say that "Question"
is a poor subject for a help request. Something like "Binary file I/O
in C" would be better. Some people may even have filters to weed out
subjects like "help", "question", etc...

NR

OK

uno

 

[Martijn]

How example with a file make with msaccess (.mdb), I make a database,
I make tables and relations (with the MSAccess form Office) and when I
open it with notepad, the text is unintelligible.
Do you want to say what it can open files with differents format (for
.mdb one form, for .exe other form, etc.)?
I am reading fopen(), and I am looking to open a file in binary
format, but, this will understand the format of file?

No it won't (there too many file formats to make a thing like this generic).
What he is trying to say, is that you need to get information on how to
interpret the file (like the suggested wotsit.org, and there are more) to
turn the illegible gibberish into something sensible.

It is possible, however, that libraries are available for such operations.
But that is off topic here. (On another, completely, entirely and utterly
off topic note: sometimes it helps to use ODBC to get easy access to MS
Office databases and spreadsheets).

Good luck,

 

[Fao, Sean]

Sorry, but I don't understand it.
How example with a file make with msaccess (.mdb), I make a database, I
make tables and relations (with the MSAccess form Office) and when I
open it with notepad, the text is unintelligible.
Do you want to say what it can open files with differents format (for
.mdb one form, for .exe other form, etc.)?
I am reading fopen(), and I am looking to open a file in binary format,
but, this will understand the format of file?

What Mark is trying to say is that the functionality to work with these
files is built into both languages. What isn't is the ability to parse
every single format out there. When the designers create a format, they lay
out the specifications. For example, the first 10 bytes may be reserved for
another program to determine the file type and version. For all we know,
the names of tables in an Access database could start at offset 20 and end
with two terminating 0's and the number 7. There's an infinite number of
possibilities, all of which are off-topic for this newsgroup. Have fun and
if you run into trouble writing some code, I'm sure one of the experts here
would be glad to help you along your way.

Good luck,

Sean

 

[Mike Wahler]

What Mark is trying to say is that the functionality to work with these
files is built into both languages. What isn't is the ability to parse
every single format out there. When the designers create a format, they lay
out the specifications. For example, the first 10 bytes may be reserved for
another program to determine the file type and version. For all we know,
the names of tables in an Access database could start at offset 20 and end
with two terminating 0's and the number 7. There's an infinite number of
possibilities,

Yes, and another possiblity (actually a probability)
is that the authors of these file formats and the
software which uses them will update this format
from time to time. Which is why it is a much better
idea to use the provided (if it is provided) interfaces
for accessing these files (e.g. MS's ODBC interface).
E.g. if you figure out the binary format of MS Word
documents, and write a program to read and/or write
these files, and the format changes, you're up the
proverbial creek.

None of these issues are simple for the novice programmer,
so be patient while learning.

HTH,
-Mike

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Poor advice, IMHO. It's certainly possible, and IIRC it's even been done by
at least one subscriber to this newsgroup, but doing it this way for
Microsoft formats is just asking for pain and suffering.

Sorry, but I don't understand it.
How example with a file make with msaccess (.mdb), I make a database, I
make tables and relations (with the MSAccess form Office) and when I
open it with notepad, the text is unintelligible.
Do you want to say what it can open files with differents format (for
.mdb one form, for .exe other form, etc.)?
I am reading fopen(), and I am looking to open a file in binary format,
but, this will understand the format of file?

You'd be a lot better off asking this question in a Windows newsgroup such
as comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 - where they will tell you all about
COM, structured storage, compound documents, IStorage, IStream, etc.

 

[Micah Cowan]

Hello,
I am a beginner with the programming and I have some question. I
am reading manuals from Internet and some book from the
library. In all those documents the C language operate wint plain
text files, and I want to know how operate with formated files
(msexcel, msaccess, mysql, etc..). If it isn't possible with C,
with C++ is possible?
Thanks
a beginner
(P.D.- Sorry for my poor english)

Hi uno,

First of all, please use more specific summaries in your subject
line: this is for your own good, as well as to avoid ticking off
the regulars. There are many readers here who skim based on the
subject line, and your subject line doesn't include enough
information to determine whether someone should bother reading
the message or not, so many people will just skip it.

Now, as to your question: pretty much any programming language
which operates on files can deal with files of a specific file
format; however, you need to know how those files are formatted
before you can deal with them. http://www.wotsit.org is
an invaluable archive of a variety of formats; however, MS
proprietary formats tend to be very tricky to handy because MS
typically does not publish their formats. Also, you can
frequently find C libraries which have already done the dirty
work for you, providing a friendly interface to the format.

HTH,
Micah

 

[Robert Stankowic]

[....]

Poor advice, IMHO. It's certainly possible, and IIRC it's even been done by
at least one subscriber to this newsgroup, but doing it this way for
Microsoft formats is just asking for pain and suffering.

I'd even say, _never_ do it in production code, but sometimes an ugly hack
may be necessary, just for one run.
<OT> That kind of hack paid me beautiful holydays with my family two years
ago, when a customer had inadvertent deleted a table from a huge Access
database (no backup, of course , and there is no official way to
"undelete" records in this case, but the information is still there..) </OT>

[....]

regards
Robert

 

[uno]

Hi uno,

First of all, please use more specific summaries in your subject
line: this is for your own good, as well as to avoid ticking off
the regulars. There are many readers here who skim based on the
subject line, and your subject line doesn't include enough
information to determine whether someone should bother reading
the message or not, so many people will just skip it.

Now, as to your question: pretty much any programming language
which operates on files can deal with files of a specific file
format; however, you need to know how those files are formatted
before you can deal with them. http://www.wotsit.org is
an invaluable archive of a variety of formats; however, MS
proprietary formats tend to be very tricky to handy because MS
typically does not publish their formats. Also, you can
frequently find C libraries which have already done the dirty
work for you, providing a friendly interface to the format.

HTH,
Micah

OK, now I understand it.

Thanks,
uno