Hi all,

I have some files we've downloaded from one of the trains we run. We can do analysis on them manually by loading them back into the application that downloaded them, however, we want to automate this process.
The automation shouldn't be too difficult, however, the files are not simple XML/CSV type files, and some are clearly binary files.

Does anyone have any experience in looking through a binary file and weeding out the information? I have asked for file specifications, but the French engineers have not been forthcoming...

Thanks for any words of advice,
Ben

I'd open it in something like VBinDiff to see if there was any obvious ASCII encoded stuff as a starting point, I guess.

PSpad would be my first choice on Windows, because it's what I open everything with. Something like a WAV file for example, you can clearly see the RIFF header and any extra info that might be there.

I'm guessing you've already done something similar though; namely looking for embedded ascii in the file? And there's nothing obvious?

If it's a pure data file in a custom format, then your best bet is to reverse engineer the application. It might not be so hard; try opening the executable in a text editor and you'll probably find a good few clues.