Vista - Convert Byte() to string

I have a function to read a binary file. I now need to convert the binary to
a string. Does someone by chance have a function that does this? If so could
you please post it, or show me an alternate method, or show me how I can
tweak my code so far (see below) to return a string from the original binary?

Function GetBinaryFileStream(argFullName)
Const adTypeBinary = 1
Dim oBinaryStream
Set oBinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
oBinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary
oBinaryStream.Open
oBinaryStream.LoadFromFile argFullName
GetBinaryFileStream = oBinaryStream.Read
End Function

Thanks much in advance.

I have a class I wrote that uses Textstream
and provides full binary file functionality -
reading, writing, returning numeric values
represented by a series of bytes... the basic
things that one would want to do with a binary file.

www.jsware.net/jsware/scripts.php5#bints

Textstream can do it all. You just have to be
careful of how you handle data that might contain
nulls.
A string, a stream and an array are not really
different things, so I don't know what you mean
by converting a binary file to string. Textstream
will read it out as a string, and that string can be
handled, or written to a new file, but you can't
"look at it too closely" unless you convert the nulls.

tocouldbinary?

"XP" <XP@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9747CDDE-1451-40BD-AE0A-D5E70F3A52B3@xxxxxxYou are half way there. The ADODB.Stream is quite versatile, but you have
to 'read the manual' to make full use of this versatility.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms677486.aspx is a good place to
start.

It has been a while since I played with this, but I think that between the
last two stream-related statements in your function, you need to set the
stream pointer to the first character in the stream and change the stream
type from binary to text. There may also be requirements to have a certain
combination of stream charset and the script's Locale (read about the
Locale-related functions in the VBScript help file.

Code like this takes care of the stream stuff:
stream.position = 0
stream.type = 2
stream.charset = "x-ansi"

I think the VBScript locale has to be set to 1033.

For more info, do a groups.google search:
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear....*&qt_s=Search

-Paul Randall

Hi Mayayana,

Thanks! Our internet Nazi's are blocking downloads of zip files so I can't
get your Clsbin package at work; however, I will download it tonight at home
and check it out, thanks for responding.


"mayayana" wrote:

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the link and your response; I will endeavor to read the manual;
it's just that immediate gratification is so much more satisfying (not to
mention deadlines of course)...don't you think? ; )


"Paul Randall" wrote:

>It could be my site, too, unless you know for
sure that you have such a restriction. I try to
block "download helpers" because they're nearly
all sloppy -- and unnecessary -- programs that
download multiple copies of everything. (I started the
blocking one day after someone using what I think
was GetRight downloaded 36MB worth of a 300KB file.
Now GetRight just calls the server, repeatedly to get
another 403 response. It will call every 6 seconds,
sometimes for hours!)

So if you were using
Download Accelerator, GetRight, Free Download
Manager, etc., you'd probably get a 403 (access
forbidden) when trying to download the zip. In fact,
people using FDM are unfortunately blocked from almost
the entire site, including webpages, due to the way that
FDM hijacks the IE userAgent string for advertising
purposes.

"mayayana" <mayaXXyana@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eOhfMa89IHA.4536@xxxxxxThanks for this info on the "helpers".
Do you know of any way for the end user to learn about how badly the helper
is hurting to web site being accessed?

-Paul Randall

Yes, I like the immediate gratification too -- at least some code that I can
run and see that it actually does what I want. In this case, I don't have
that to give you. The google search link I gave you gets you to a specific
thread that talks about this and has some code. If you search for some of
the key words used in this section of my response:then you may find a bunch of links, some of which may have some code you can
copy and paste to get your job done. Its been a while, so I don't remember
the details of what was posted.

-Paul Randall

"XP" <XP@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E02BF9ED-52D2-43B6-BABB-71E9EDC6CD20@xxxxxx

helperI've never used a "helper" before myself, so
my only experience is with my own site. I like
to read the server "raw" logs daily, to see
where people linked from, find out when I
have bad links, etc. That's how I started seeing
the problem of download helpers. I don't know how
much the end user can know. I send a 403 to
helpers on my site, but none of the helper programs
seems to be designed to recognize a 403 response.
So there's no way for me to tell people why they're
being blocked.

As I understand it, helper programs originated
with dial-up, as a way to make sure that a download
didn't get dropped partway through. They typically
work by opening numerous connections to the server,
each requesting only part of the download file. That's
a somewhat questionable logic with highspeed, except
when one is downloading something like a 700MB CD
ISO. And it also, often, doesn't work anyway because
many servers won't allow multiple connections from the
same IP. But beyond the issue of their real usefulness, from
reading my logs I find that helpers usually download several
times the bytage of a file. On my own site I have few
downloads over 100 KB, yet I often see people on highspeed
connections downloading a 50KB file in 5 or 6 pieces.
By the time it's done they've downloaded maybe 150 KB
total. Or sometimes they just download the whole file numerous
times within a few seconds. Often they send the server a
browser userAgent on the first download and then download
several more times with a custom helper userAgent string.
Ironically, people don't notice because with highspeed
it only takes a few seconds either way. I often wonder
what people experience when they've downloaded successfully,
say, twice, and were blocked four times, all within 8 seconds.
Did they get the file or do they see it as blocked?

The problem for webmasters is 1) excess traffic that's
unnecessary and 2) difficulty counting actual downloads.

I can't identify all helpers with certainty because they
vary in how they identify themselves to the server. The popular
ones like FDM and Download Accelerator seem to be minor
nuisances, downloading 2-6 copies instead of 1. I have reason
to believe that GetRight is by far the worst, calling the server
over and over again, often hundreds of times. (GetRight shows
a dummy userAgent, so I had to identify it based on several
bits of circumstantial evidence.) I don't know whether it's just
badly designed or whether maybe it's outdated.
The behavior makes no sense. But in general all of the helpers
I've seen seem to be poorly designed in that they download
multiples, clearly not keeping track of what they're doing.
(And in most cases these are multiple downloads with a 200
code, not a 206. In other words, they're not downloading
pieces. They're downloading the whole thing redundantly.)

Another annoyance is the programs that download one of
everything linked from a page. I suspect the people who do
that are probably also the ones who never get around to
looking at what they've downloaded. They're too busy hoarding
more files. But those programs (scrapers?) at least seem to
work properly. I seldom see a "scraper" download more than it
needs to.