Hi guys!
I appreciate everything you did to help me so far. I am on the path of learning "C" for OS' also. Currently I know "C" for microcontrollers.
Here is my question. I tried to find a way to extract the character, but it seems to be very well hidden. Logically the characters should be the "ASCI" bytes from 0 to 127, but it gives me garbage result. I am not interested in the modern methods for doing this, I need to know how to identify the bytes and print them on the console.
Easier said than done for these formats, but: interpret the file according to the format and thereby identify what is text.
If the option is available to you, it would probably be easier to export to a text-based format (e.g., Excel spreadsheet to CSV) and then parse that.
You meant ASCII, but Unicode encodings have been around for ages.Originally Posted by ArakelTheDragon
Last edited by laserlight; 03-19-2019 at 02:11 PM.
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Yes I did meant ASCII, what if I try extracting Unicode? I know its hard, but I don't see why. I don't want to export, I know it can be done in "C", maybe there is some well hidden function. If not ASCII or Unicode, they still have to identified somehow, are they 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit? Maybe there is something before and after them?
The Excel, Word, and other Office files (e.g., .docx) are simply ZIP archives, and you can extract them with anything capable of extracting a ZIP file. The main content is stored in one of the XML files. You just have to sift through that XML file to find what you need.
PDF is a completely different format, and it is also compressed (but not with ZIP), so you'll need to find some way to decompress and extract the text information you're looking for (some PDFs contain images of text or the vector outlines of the characters, and not the actual text that they represent, so you're out of luck with those files unless you can run them through some sort of OCR process, which can get quite complicated and advanced).
In order to start the divison, I can check the file extension to see what procedure should be next, is there a way to check the encoding also? Encoding=bytes coded in a way?
Assume ASCII: you spot a byte with the value of 65. Is that an 'A' or is it part of an integer that means something else? Without reference to the format, you simply cannot know. It is absolutely impossible to tell given just the byte. So yes, you take reference from "something before and after them", i.e., you need to interpret the file according to the format.
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Maybe just start with one target and build from there
I haven't tried it, but maybe you should have a look at libxlsxwriter, or at least look at the code
Fact - Beethoven wrote his first symphony in C
I start with excel, which brings me back to the ".zip" file formula.
There must be a way to convert pdf, excel and so on to "txt"? Maybe a CMD command with "system()"?
Some background might be good: your target platform is Windows, and are you doing this for yourself only?
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
