How do you open and display a BINARY .dat file in VB.NET.

Of course when I tried to open it in Notepad, I got weird characters.

"arm01PropsSevered arm‡  bl01FXBlack lightà  cat01PropsDeranged catÏ  cool01Masks
Cool GhoulW  fog01FXFog machine«
             fogj01FX Fog juiceç  "

I don't know what is in the .dat file.
I don't know what kind of binary this is.

This xx.dat file is used by a sample VB.NET code to pull data from it to display Dropdownlist.

That is why I wanted to open it to see what filestream I am working with in VS.NET.

Can someone give me some code?



Thanks.

You need to provide more information.- what are you trying to display? the 1 and 0's? the data as ascii? what?


Hal Levy
Web Developer, PDI Inc.

NOT a Wiley/Wrox Employee

before that you need to imports System.IO
you can try the code listed below:

Dim fs as FileStream("file.dat", FileMode.Open)
Dim r as BinaryReader(fs)
Console.WriteLine(r.ReadString())

wei chung