I am new to pascal and trying to write a program to unravel a binary file
containing nul (#0) characters.  The problem is that whenever i read this
into a string, delphi sees the nul character and terminates the string.

What is the best way to break the input data into its "field" components.
I have worked out that the layout contains a date followed by 5 number
fields.  I've been using   xString := copy(rec,5,4);  Unfortunately
character 5 contains #0 so xString
becomes an empty string.

Alan in KL.

The Copy() routine shouldn't care about Null characters, something
else must be going on.  

From your description I'm not sure you're entirely clear on reading
from a binary file (any of which will almost undoubtedly contain
"null" characters for numerous reasons), and working with the fields
in a record (which I assume is what "rec" is).  

Can you post or Email me a bit more code to give some more context to
the problem?  F'rinstance, how is rec declared, how is xString
declared (and are you using D1 or D2? and if D2: Short or Long
strings)?

HTH

Stephen Posey
slpo...@concentric.net

If you're reading blocks of binary data from a file, your code should look
something like this:

var
  F : File;   // <- Not Text
  Data : Array[0..5] of Byte;
  BytesReadIn : Integer;

begin
  F := AssignFile(F,'FileName.bin');
  Reset(F,1);       // The 1 here indicates the size of each record to read
in.
                         // You may want to adjust this if you're reading
in blocks of
                         // data that are all the same size.
  try
    Repeat
      BlockRead(F,Data,Sizeof(Data),BytesReadIn);
       // Do something with Data[0..BytesReadIn-1] here
    Until BytesReadIn <> Sizeof(Data);
  finally
    CloseFile(F);
  end;
end;

Hi,

handling is not really for binary 'blob' manipulation.

Shaun

On Thu, 01 May 1997 22:29:46 +0930, Shaun Cunniffe

No, only the view in the de{*word*81} shows that.  In fact, all the
characters are still there.

A buffer is a good idea, but a PChar is not.  The convention with
PChar is that a null character signals the end of the string.

Duncan Murdoch