Decode REG_BINARY to ASCII (plain text)

[guinness 1,537]

Does anyone have a concrete way of converting/decoding REG_BINARY?

[Danyfirex 789]

Do you thing something like this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa379887(v=vs.85).aspx ?

[trancexx 1,027]

The question doesn't make sense because REG_BINARY holds arbitrary data. Decoding requires knowing encoding scheme.

Other than that it's binary data.

[guinness 1,537]

Fair point. I am trying to parse Windows Shell Bags >> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813711

[Gianni 816]

try this little snippet from this >post.... (of course trash in - trash out)

(some string copied from >this  post are decoded for example ....)

edit:

sorry, I think I misunderstood the question

expandcollapse popup

Global $Text
While 1
    $Text = InputBox("Binary", "Enter binary string")
    If @error Then Exit
    MsgBox(0, "", _BinToText($Text))
WEnd

; Global $Text ="Hello"
; ConsoleWrite($Text & @CRLF)
; ConsoleWrite(_TextToBin($Text) & @CRLF)
; ConsoleWrite(_BinToText(_TextToBin($Text)) & @CRLF)

Func _TextToBin($Text)
    Local $Binary = ""
    For $i = 1 To StringLen($Text)
        $Binary &= _DecToBin(Asc(StringMid($Text, $i, 1)))
    Next
    Return $Binary
EndFunc   ;==>_TextToBin

Func _BinToText($Binary)
    Local $Text = ""
    For $i = 1 To StringLen($Binary) Step 8
        $Text &= Chr(_BinToDec(StringMid($Binary, $i, 8)))
    Next
    Return $Text
EndFunc   ;==>_BinToText

Func _DecToBin($Dec) ; from decimal to binary
    Local $sBinString = ""
    While $Dec
        $sBinString = BitAND($Dec, 1) & $sBinString
        $dec = BitShift($dec, 1)
    WEnd
    Return StringRight("00000000" & $sBinString, 8)
EndFunc   ;==>_DecToBin

Func _BinToDec($Bin) ; from binary to decimal
    Local $dec = 0
    For $i = 0 To StringLen($Bin) - 1
        $dec += 2 ^ $i * StringMid($Bin, StringLen($Bin) - $i, 1)
    Next
    Return $dec
EndFunc   ;==>_BinToDec

Edited June 12, 2014 by Chimp

[BrewManNH 1,315]

If all you want is the information about what's in there, and this isn't an exercise on how to decode the information, then you can use ShellBagsView from nirsoft.

[guinness 1,537]

@Chimp - Thanks.

@BrewManNH - It's for an application I am working on over the summer.