Reading Binary Files

[Guest]

Basically, if you start deserializing and don't see the magic number,
the contents is just the whole of the file.

If you *do* see the magic number, you then read whatever header
information you've put into the new files, and deserialize
appropriately.

Everytime I serialize a file I have to generate a Magic byte (say 16 bytes)
and add them to file. But at the time of deserializing i wont be having that
magic number with me...(since i am serializing with new magic bytes every
time and I can desrialize any file in my application). So with the previous
version files, and I am taking the first 16 bytes i will not be able to tell
whether this is a magic byte or actual data.

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Everytime I serialize a file I have to generate a Magic byte (say 16 bytes)
and add them to file. But at the time of deserializing i wont be having that
magic number with me...(since i am serializing with new magic bytes every
time and I can desrialize any file in my application). So with the previous
version files, and I am taking the first 16 bytes i will not be able to tell
whether this is a magic byte or actual data.

But this is what I was saying before - if you generate a random set of
16 bytes to be your magic number (and that's the same for *every* file
you create) then the chances of another file starting with the exact
same 16 bytes are incredibly small.

There is absolutely no way round that kind of problem being present at
all, because however you decide to serialize your files, there's always
a possibility that there will be an old file with exactly the same
content as a serialized pair of files.