> From: Scott Lutz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions to actually
> reading/modifying/making the infamous .dat files that are spread all
> over the Win32 file system?
>
> I would like to see what is in them, and maybe edit if I choose, and
> wonder if there is a module out there for doing this?
>
> Anyone?
This really depends on what .dat files you mean.
1) You might want to get a hexa editor and see what's inside. Not
that they are likely to be human readable, but most files start with
some kind of header. Eg. .EXE usualy starts with "MZ", in Word
documents you'll find something like (this time in hexa)
D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 A1 E1
then some zeroes with a few nonzero bytes scattered around and
then a few lines of FF.
2) .dat is a bit strange extension. it's used by the system to store
parts of the registry, but also by many different programs to store
ANY data. And the internal format of course differs.
If you mean those USER.dat, SYSTEM.dat (Win9x) and
NTUSER.dat, SOFTWARE, DEFAULT, SAM, SYSTEM
(WinNT/2k) then you may use either Win32::TieRegistry or
Win32::Registry.
You may need to load the file you want to edit if it's not loaded
already (say if you want to change something in
NTUSER.dat/HKEY_CURRENT_USER for all users). I believe
TieRegistry contains a function for this, for Win32::Registry you will
want to download the Win32::Registry2 patch from
http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz
Jenda
=========== [EMAIL PROTECTED] == http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz ==========
There is a reason for living. There must be. I've seen it somewhere.
It's just that in the mess on my table ... and in my brain.
I can't find it.
--- me
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