Thread: better way than hardcode things

Hi
is there a good alternative than hardcode things because I want to hide data,so you just dont can cheat quiz with open the text file in a texteditor

I know its possible to read in data,but maybe a crypto format in data file that gets dechiffered?
M

Originally Posted by gaxio

What are your real goals? Anything that's included with the program can be read by anything with that program. You can't encrypt things because the program would necessarily need to include the decryption key, and there's nothing to stop anyone from just decrypting it themselves or adding a few lines of code that dumps the data after your program decrypts it. Or they could use a debugger to see that data at any time.

However, if all you're looking to do is prevent a casual observer from viewing the answers to a quiz, a simple caesar cipher will do that, and is very easy to implement. Or, even better, store the answers in a file or a char array (not a string literal, since this will make a lot of unprintable characters" that uses XOR encryption. XOR encryption is extremely easy to implement (a single line function can handle both encryption and decryption) and will produce absolute jibberish that doesn't even resemble english text.

thanks
I want is to stop Ordinary Joe,from just read it as plain textfile,not waste time and energy to make it impossible to access info
also I want to go from lots of hardcoded strings and char arrays to a cleaner and better way doing it

if I read file in deschiffer and have init function that goes thru string data after the first string it searches after for string ending and updates a pointer in a pointer array to point at next string would that be good way of handling structure with string data with different lenght,mixed with few integers in ascii format?
anything must be better than have to use a mastodont switch with lots of hardcoded data

For a cleaner and better way of doing things, store the quiz answers in a database with an embedded database engine like SQLite. For your low-requirement security, encrypt the database file and just embed the secret key in your program. SQLite has an encryption extension, but it isn't free.

Originally Posted by flp1969

Hummmm... it isn't free as "freedom", but it is public domain and free to use:

SQLite Copyright

No, unlike SQLite itself, the encryption extension is not in the public domain and isn't free to use. Refer to the sample license agreement, as well as the price quoted on the info page: "The cost of a perpetual source code license for SEE is US $2000."

thanks laserlight,Dren