Convert from 16-bit little-endian to big-endian

[Nologic]

Hi guys I'm kind of banging my head against a wall.

I'm looking at converting a binary file from little-endian to big-endian...I've seen tons of examples of how to do this in C, C++, C# and a few other langs...but turned up nothing for doing so in AutoIt...any help would be most welcome.

Thanks ahead of time.

[rudi]

Hi.

What have you tired so far, eh?

Regards, Rudi.

[PsaltyDS]

FileOpen() allows you to specify the Unicode format for your write file. See the help file.

[Nologic]

I played with FileOpen but didn't get much love there.

Sample file: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XRPD4VPJ

Allegedly I just need to byteswap the endianness of the file...which should result in a MD5 hash of: f5ed78a173619060232b7c1eb28c140f

[PsaltyDS]

You don't have to do anything to the data.

1. Read the file to memory (to an AutoIt variable), as in: $vData = FileRead($sFileName)

2. If the file type is not automatically recognized (unlikely, but possible), then:

- a. Open the file with FileOpen() in the appropriate mode first

- b. Then FileRead()

- b. Be sure to FileClose() the handle

3. After reading the data, open the file to write with FileOpen() and the appropriate flags

4. FileWrite()

5. FileClose()

6. ???

7. Profit!

[Nologic]

Okay FileOpen seems to work fine except I end up with FE FF prefixed to the data, which offsets the data.

$Junk = FileOpen ( "track02.raw" , 32 )
$MoreJunk = FileRead ( $Junk )
FileClose( $Junk )

$NewJunk = FileOpen ( "track02.bak" , 66 )
FileWrite ( $NewJunk , $MoreJunk )
FileClose ( $NewJunk )

Just wondering if I'm missing something here...I can certainly trim the data...but it would certainly be nice not to.

Okay what I'm doing now which gets me what I wanted:

; Read in Little Endian
$Open_01 = FileOpen ( "track02.raw" , 32 )
$Read_01 = FileRead ( $Open_01 )
FileClose( $Open_01 )

; Over Write in Big Endian
$Open_02 = FileOpen ( "track02.raw" , 66 )
FileWrite ( $Open_02 , $Read_01 )
FileClose ( $Open_02 )

; Read Binary Stepping in 2 - Removes FE FF
$Open_03 = FileOpen ( "track02.raw" , 16 )
$Read_02 = FileRead ( $Open_03 , 2 )
$Read_03 = FileRead ( $Open_03 )
FileClose( $Open_03 )

; Over Write Binary
$Open_04 = FileOpen ( "track02.raw" , 18 )
FileWrite ( $Open_04 , $Read_03 )
FileClose ( $Open_04 )

I'd like to say thanks for all the help I got, and if anyone has a cleaner suggestion I'm all ears.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Nologic

[PsaltyDS]

Not sure what it is you are trying to work around. What did I miss? Doesn't this work for you?

$sFile = @ScriptDir & "\Test.dat"

; Create little-endian file to start with
$hFile = FileOpen($sFile, 32+2) ; Overwrite UTF-16 LE
For $n = 1 To 10
    FileWriteLine($hFile, "Test file line: " & $n)
Next
FileClose($hFile)

MsgBox(64, "Pause", "Created UTF-16 LE file:  " & $sFile & @CRLF & _
    "Encoding = " & FileGetEncoding($sFile) & @CRLF & @CRLF & _
    FileRead($sFile))

; Read little-endian file
$hFile = FileOpen($sFile) ; Open UTF-16 LE file
$vData = FileRead($hFile) ; Read file
FileClose($hFile)

; Overwrite as big-endian
$hFile = FileOpen($sFile, 64+2) ; Overwrite UTF-16 BE
FileWrite($hFile, $vData)
FileClose($hFile)

MsgBox(64, "Done", "Converted file to UTF-16 BE:  " & $sFile& @CRLF & _
    "Encoding = " & FileGetEncoding($sFile) & @CRLF & @CRLF & _
    FileRead($sFile))

[Nologic]

If you view the resulting file from your script in Hex mode you'll notice FE FF at the start...which is something I'm trying to avoid.

Don't take what I said in the wrong context, I'm sincerely thankful for you help...I was looking everywhere but the FileOpen command.

[PsaltyDS]

Ah, I get it now. You are stripping the UTF-16 BOM. The BOM is always 0xFEFF but gets re-ordered by encoding to expose big/little endian usage (0xFEFF = big-endian; 0xFFFE = little-endian).

In UTF-8 there is no need for the BOM, but I thought it was either required or highly recommended for UTF-16. What app do you need UTF-16 with no BOM for?

[Ascend4nt]

Nologic, the 'FE FF' is a Byte-Order-Mark that is created when using FileOpen. Its useful to have this for any application trying to read the file as text, because then it will know how to interpret it.

However, you can use FileOpen with a binary flag to force it not to create the BOM. Prior to doing this, call StringToBinary() (see Help file), then take that binary data and write it to the file.

*edit: oops, looks like Psalty and I crossed posts. Also the 'StringToBinary' would be used only if you are reading in the data as Unicode, not binary. In that case you'd need a BinaryToString() also, which would be a waste..

Edited November 16, 2010 by Ascend4nt

[Nologic]

PsaltyDS -

Thanks for the info.

No app really...actually it deals with emulation. Dreamcast GD-Roms store the data tracks as little-endian & audio tracks as big-endian..however when these tracks are stored into a single file by Mame's CHDman upon export they are all little-endian...so to restore things to original condition the audio tracks have to be converted back over to big-endian...but it doesn't have the BOM marker present.

Ascend4nt -

Thanks for the info & additional suggestions.

Ended up doing the following which works fine for my needs.

; Change Endian Condition
        If $Game_Tracks[$i][1] = 'AUDIO' Then
            ; Read Little Endian
            $Endian_Open_01 = FileOpen ( $Track , 16 )
            $Endian_Read_01 = FileRead ( $Endian_Open_01 )
            FileClose( $Endian_Open_01 )

            ; Change Endian
            $Endian_Read_01 = BinaryToString( $Endian_Read_01 , 2 )
            $Endian_Read_01 = StringToBinary( $Endian_Read_01 , 3 )

            ; Over Write Big Endian
            $Endian_Open_02 = FileOpen  ( $Track , 18 )
            FileWrite ( $Endian_Open_02 , $Endian_Read_01 )
            FileClose ( $Endian_Open_02 )
        EndIf