Portable executable discrepancies - c++

I'm looking at this image/walkthrough of the PE format: https://i.imgur.com/LIImg.jpg
It seems to have some discrepancies from the official definition in WinNT.h though.
*#1: The 'signature' field in 'PEHeader' isn't in the PE header in the official definition. This discrepancy doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference.
*#2: In the 'Optional Header', there's two 4-byte fields between 'AddressOfEntryPoint' and 'ImageBaseAddress' in the official documentation that are not shown in the walkthrough. This one seems like it could make or break a file... The walkthrough does show 'AddressOfEntryPoint' as taking 8 bytes when it should be 4 though.

Related

Is there any browsers that sends multipart/form-data sub-parts?

I am writing a webserver in C++. I am looking at the POST documentation on w3:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4
I see that a POST is supposed to support the full multi-parts scheme: parts and sub-parts (and obviously, sub-sub-parts...) just like for email attachments.
Is there any browser and/or tool that do that on a normal basis? In other words, is it really important for a server to support parts and sub-parts?
The obvious problem with that is the fact that it could mean that two files are uploaded under the same name. That's quite a problem if you ask me. Also, from what I can see in PHP it is not supported at all in that realm. Am I correct?
Ah! I guess I should have searched a little more and to tell you the truth I had not thought of looking at HTML5 for the answer.
The following paragraph actually includes the answer:
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/forms.html#multipart-form-data
Note: In particular, this means that multiple files submitted as
part of a single element will
result in each file having its own field; the "sets of
files" feature ("multipart/mixed") of RFC 2388 is not used.
So it is clear that sub-parts (multipart/mixed) are not to be supported.

Following the flow of code

I'm trying to learn the level format in one of my favourite games, which is almost totally undocumented. Basically the only document that describes the level format is simply by saying things like First 12 bytes: header 4 following bytes: number of materials x next bytes: array of materials, and things like that.
I'm very inexperienced in hex and don't completely understand what they're saying. However, there is a level editor, and the source is freely available on google code. I was thinking of adding this in to my visual studio and trying to learn the level format by reading how the level editor opens the files.
However, another problem, I don't know c++ (I know python). This means I probably won't be able to locate which part of the code reads the bytes and whatnot.
What I'm looking for, is something that will allow me to follow the flow of the code, in its execution. Essentially something that acts similar to setting a breakpoint on every line, and having it show me what specific portion of code is executing when reading the file contents.
However, obviously setting breakpoints on every line is very messy and slow. I'm looking for something that will simply show me what code is being run when I open the file in the editor.
Does anyone know what I could do? Thanks.
You're looking for a feature to step from one statement to the next; every debugger I know has such a feature. You start by setting a single breakpoint at the beginning of the interesting region, and starting from there you "step" through your code.
E.g. in Visual C++ 2010, the key F10 does one step; you can also "step into" the next statement (e.g. a method call) with F11.
In your case, set the breakpoint to where the reading of the level file starts, and continue from there. To find the place where the file is read can be a hard problem as well - depending on the clearness of the code; but if it's well written code, there should be a method with "read" in the name or "load" or something similar - you'll figure it out!
You might have to know at least some basic C++ syntax to be able to follow what's going, though.
I would also recommend reading up on Debugging HowTo's (e.g this one).
The document wich you find so obscure, is just the level format specifications, in most cases the specifications are all you need. You need as well some little extra experience with file reading.
When reading a file you have to warry about few things.
1) When reading byte by byte (8 bits) order is no changed.
2) When reading 32bits at a time byte order can change according to endianness of machine.
(for example 0x12345678 becomes 0x78563412 when endiannes changes)
There was a very old tutorial that can help you loading 3D models that helped me to start working with files:
http://www.spacesimulator.net/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials:3ds_Loader
this is usefull because you have part of the specifications (like in original documentation) and it shows how you can create a loader just starting from specifications. That's all you need. That's C but there is no big difference from C++ in this case.
If you need some other simple file format specification with related file loader for making things clearer to you, you can also look at libktx and ktx specifications:
http://www.khronos.org/opengles/sdk/tools/KTX/file_format_spec/
If I remember correctly there's also a unofficial C++ KTX loader you can look at if you itend to write C++ oop code rather than C.

Need inputs for making a tool to insert preformatted comments in C/C++ source/header file

I am trying to develop a tool that inserts comments in C/C++ source files in pre-defined formats.
The comments could be:
file headers <-> file names required
class comments <-> class name required
function comments <-> function name required
Following points are required to be taken mind:
If the comments are already there in right format then leave them intact.
If the comments are broken them fix them and insert them.
Some desirable but non important features:
Check and fix the indentation.
Check if any breaks are missing in their respective cases.
Please suggest open-source / free libraries / logic to aid in this.
I guess you 've got two choices:
Generate the whole c/c++ code and headers from a template or scripting language and use this one to insert the preformated comments. This is of course not an option if you still got a lot of code.
Or you need a tool to parse the code into sth. you can further use. You could try doxygen to generate html, xml or some other format. Problem would still be, how to get the generated documentation back into your sources...

psd file format

I am attempting to find documentation of the psd file format so I can read in a .psd and then save out the individual layers as files, along with do other modifications. Does anyone know of any document in on the .psd file format? (Just for reference, I will be writing this in C++)
If there are any code examples of loading a .psd file in C++ then I would appreciate them being linked.
(Please not turn this into a "just use XXX software". This is not homework, or anything related to that. I am doing this because I think it will be a fun project to work on. I will ask for posts to be down voted if this happens.)
There's also some Objective-C code on GitHub (should be easily understandable for anyone with a C++ background), also source of this gem, which appears to sum it up nicely:
At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format.
PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an
insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having
worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire
that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.
If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different
places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those
too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide
that these particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement
should not be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned,
or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included.
Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD,
of course, uses all three, and more.
Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of
your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th
birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but
at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people
responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.
Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this,
I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending
me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or
other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so
difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I
was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done
so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire.
Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
PSD is not my favourite file format.
Just so you are warned. :)
This will not be a fun project, the .psd format is big. It incorporates every feature Adobe has put into Photoshop over many years.
I believe the specification can be had from Adobe, but they don't just hand it out to the public. You'll have to contact them and jump through some hoops first.
The PSD file format specification as written by Adobe is here;
http://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/
Last update: June 2012. As far as I know this is the best available source about the PSD file format even there are few mistakes.
First I recommend starting by dividing PSD into blocks.
Enjoy!
MyPSD::CPSD class is a C++ class that can load images saved in Adobe's Photoshop native format.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/10398/Import-Adobe-Photoshop-psd-images
MolecularMatters psd_sdk seems like a good library to take inspiration form: https://github.com/MolecularMatters/psd_sdk
It allows to read layers from a .psd file and much more.

funny looking comments - c++

when i read through source files of opensource projects i often come across some weird phrases in the comments
/*
#brief ......
#usage.....
#remarks....
#par....
*/
questions
1.What are they?(were not mentioned when i was learning c++)
2.Do they have any documentation(where)
They are just comments and as such have no special meaning in C++. They are probably to allow a documentation generator (For example Doxygen) to extract the data from the comments.
Those are for some flavour of automatic documentation generator. Another program runs through the code looking for comments of like you see there. The #... keywords identify how the documentation should be laid out, and that program generates pretty HTML or printed documentation directly from the source code. It's a way to keep the docs up-to-date with the code more easily.