Do you have any idea how long your delimited chunk of data will be? If not, how about maximum and/or minimum lengths for it?

Once you find the chunk you are searching for, how will you differentiate it from any other delimited chunk included in this "arbitrary binary file?" I ask because if you have some criteria by which you can evaluate it as being the one you want, that might help you in the actual search.

Update: It occurred to me that since you seem to have a maximum size buffer in mind anyway, the best approach might be to simply read in a buffer of that size, search it with index for your delimiter, discard everything up to the delimiter, and use read to fill the buffer back up to the max size. That's more C-ish than Perlish I suppose but does it matter?

Update 2: bluto's point below about the delimiter crossing the block boundary is very well-taken. That would have been a nasty bug in the method I described.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

In reply to Re: How do I search this binary file? by sauoq
in thread How do I search this binary file? by John M. Dlugosz

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