I'm new, just subscribed. I'm only an amateur programmer and only know the basics of vb.net. I've always been interested in encryption and recently got interested in compression. I've been able to make working encryptions and compressions by simply modifying the text in a file but as I'm sure is obvious, this is limited and slow. I must read each character, determine it's binary value, do the editing, change it back to decimal, then back to (an)other character(s)... it's slow, it's awkward, it's inaccurate, and it's a pain to program. My question isn't about anything specific but it is simple: "Is it possible to directly edit a file on the binary level? If so, how?"

It does not have to be in VB, I will gladly learn any programming language that will allow me to accomplish this. However, VB is comfortable for me. If I could be pointed in a direction I would greatly appreciate it. I've been searching the net for a while and asking all my programmer friends... no one seems to have an answer for me. My problem is that I don't know where to start.

Sorry for just diving right in and proclaiming my noob-ish-ness, but I'm pretty devoted to making these encryptions and compressions work as best as possible and I know that I won't be able to do that until I can directly edit files on the binary level.

also... I don't know anything about binary files, should there be anything I need to watch out for? Is there data therein that I should not touch?

anyway, I think that's just about it for now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
HiddenFire/Nathaniel

hi there...

did you read about encription algorith and compression???

there are a lot of algorith that do that without change the original!! are you saying that you are changing the original file??

i think you should start learning something like huffman trees.. that a basic method for compress...

also VB would be almost the worst languaje to try it...

and yes.. you can edit a binary file, but i don think you will accomplish anything usefull...

HTH

Gonzalo

I learned all I have about encryption on my own, I allready have the algorithms down, I just want to make it faster and work on files instead of just text as it does now.

I don't actually want to edit the original file. It would make a new file that is encrypted/compressed.

The compression is still in development (I've got it compressing but no way to know if it's doing it properly because I haven't coded the decompression algorithm yet).

I know VB isn't a very good language to be doing this in but I suppose the only reason I work with it is because it is what I know... and I like that I can build the gui so quick and easy.

This is what I am currently doing:
read a character, find it's ascii value, convert that value to binary, alter the value on the binary level, convert the new value(s) back to decimal and then return them as (a) new character(s).
it's just awkward.

I want to be able to just work on the binary level:
grab a binary value, alter the binary value, ouput new value.
MUCH simplier.

For the most part, I have been told that my encryptions are useless (too slow and awkward) and that my compression is little more than "interesting" but I'm not trying to make them usefull, I'm just doing this because I want to see if I can do it.

Thanks for the help, I'll look into huffman trees (allways willing to learn something new),
~HiddenFire/Nathaniel

If you are going to insult a language, could you at least provide an alternative?

c is a better language to do that.. or c++..

and you really think im insulting the language?? i eat thanks to VB.. but for certain things is not the better choice...



HTH

Gonzalo