Parsing eMule's server.met file?

[inventive]

I wanted to write sort of plugin to parse certain data from eMule's server.met file..
Problem is that I do not know how to read data that seem to be encoded in some strange way!
I do know how to write code and how to parse data from many diferent types of data files like plain txt or xml files but I have no idea how to parse this???
If you do not use eMule you can see this file (download is small) at

http://ed2k.2x4u.de/index.html

- for example!

Any help or link will be appreciated!!!

Thanks!

 

[Sheco]

So you are asking for the format for this server.met file?

 

[inventive]

I guess so...
Maybe it's format and maybe something else,
the file should contain this data:

Server Name
Server Users Number
Server Files Number

Server Name is readable but datas are encrypted or something else!?

 

[Sheco]

It might be encrypted or it might be not in plain ASCII text.

Think about if you open a DBase file in Notepad.... with a .dbf file extension. You can read most of the actual data but the top header part of the file looks like scrambled poo and the row delimitters look funky and most of the numeric fields look pretty bad also.

The reason is it is just not stored in ASCII... its not really encrypted per se, just uses a different file format.

You can still read these files with VB but you need to use the "B" string functions to get the byte data. You know, like MidB(), LeftB(), InStrB() etc...

Think about a long integer. It is 32 bits. That is 4 bytes... or you could save the ASCII representation of the long integer and it would take as many as 10 characters for the max long, 11 if it was negative, and 14 if you include the commas. (ie: -2,147,483,648) Now if you did that in UniCode you have doubled it up to 28 characters... in other words you have just increased the size of the data on the disk seven fold.

So my guess is that the parts of the file that do not hold plain text may not be encrypted but rather stored in a non-ASCII format.

 

[inventive]

yes, i can read binary data,
i'm still thinking of scheme used in creating this file, it's possible that 'they' have stored some data as ASCII and some not?
i could try to convert BinaryToString?

ok, back to the old drawing board,
i will inform you if i make any progress!

thank you a lot!

 

[infinitelo]

if the actual data is ascii, you can read one char at a time and throw out non alpha-numeric. then its just a matter of knowing how many char per record.

(used this method to salvage most of a currupted dbf file.)

if it is to be it's up to me