problem encoding DB file

[Nina Binde]

Hi all,

I just wrote a simple java class to encode the DB file. This is the code I have:
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile("db-2x2.db", "rw");
byte b[] = new byte[10];
raf.read(b);
String str = new String(b, "ISO-8859-1");
System.out.println("The first 10 bytes of the file is "+str);

The str printed out is some strange characters like faces, etc..What am I doing wrong here?
Thanks for helping..

[John Stone]

You are probably modifying file in another directory. Try to invoke your program from command line (in directory where your file is) or provide full path to file.

[Jason Moors]

Hi Nina,

I think the problem is that you are converting all the bytes to characters.

Start of file
4 byte numeric, magic cookie value. Identifies this as a data file
4 byte numeric, total overall length in bytes of each record
2 byte numeric, number of fields in each record

So you should use :

    
int magicCookie = raf.readInt();
int recLength = raf.readInt();
short numFields = raf.readShort();

Regards
Jason

[Nina Binde]

Thanks guys for your reply. Jason, you are right. I should have read the specs more clearly.