Thread: Extracting Files

Hi there,

I am trying to write a file archiving utility, and the archiving has gone well. However i am trying to extract and i am having trouble. I was hoping someone could offer some help as i am very much a novice at C#.

Inside my archived file, i have a header for the file archived, then the contents of that file file, then a file footer, then a header for the second file and the contents and then a header, then another header etc.

For the extraction of the files, i want to read the first header file and create a file of the same name and then read from the archived file, and write to the new existing file the contents. I then want to read the header file for the second file, creating a second file and reading and writing it's contents to the second file created. I want to only use read(), write(), open(), close(), lseek() etc.

Hopefully this makes sense
If not, please ask for more information

Help will be much appreciated

Thank you

C# + read(), write(), and open() = confused.

Is there a valid reason to use *nix-specific file handling functions?

I fail to see how you can do part 1 ("archiving") and not realize that part 2 ("extracting") is the same as part 1, with the read coming from the archive and the write going to the file instead of the other way around and calling decompress() instead of compress().

I understand what your saying, but i'm still having trouble.

When i am extracting the files from the 'archived' file, i will not know what files are in there. Therefore i have to seek through the 'archived' file to find separations between how ever many files there are in the 'archived' file; hence the header and footer of separating each file.
If i give the 'archived' file to someone with instructions of how to extract them, how will they know what files are within it.


My archiving method of files into the 'archived' at the command prompt is:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ./program file1 file2 file3 archivedfile.txt

And mu extraction method id as follows:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ./program archivedfile.txt

Therefore each method is separated by an if statement:

if (argc >2)
archive..

if (argc == 2)
extract..

Does that make sense?
As i said i am very much a novice to C#

Thanks

Originally Posted by man_of _my_word

When i am extracting the files from the 'archived' file, i will not know what files are in there. Therefore i have to seek through the 'archived' file to find separations between how ever many files there are in the 'archived' file; hence the header and footer of separating each file.
If i give the 'archived' file to someone with instructions of how to extract them, how will they know what files are within it.

Because the header will tell them, or so you said before.

Originally Posted by man_of _my_word

As i said i am very much a novice to C#

Thanks

Are you really planning to use C#? Really? Really really?

Originally Posted by Sebastiani

So...your program created the archive, but can't unpack it? Well, have you tried printing the output as each data structure is traversed to verify that you're reading it properly?

Yes, i can create the archive, but yes, i cannot unpack it. I just cant get my head around how to write the code to seek through the file and extract it to newly created file according to the headers within the 'archived' file.
The archiving process is reading perfectly, but i have not written the code to extract yet, hence why i am asking for help?

How do you know the files are successfully archived? Do you have sufficient information to extract a file? Why are you trying to seek if you don't allow extraction of individual files? What does your header and footer look like? How do you determine what are header/footer contents and what are file contents in your archive? Some/all of your code might be very helpful here.