This really depends on what data you are trying to parse and how it is encoded.

It would be helpful if we knew more, a file specification would be nice ;) about what the data is and why you need the changes.

If you have no specification as to how the data is stored you will run into trouble interpreting significant and non significant changes.

ie. databases often store numbers to indicate the length of a string in bytes. If you don't know that then interpreting the following data is very difficult.

If your data is compressed in any way then it is only worthwhile doing the comparision after decompression otherwise the results are meaningless. If you don't know the compession method you are at a distinct disadvantage, i.e. cracking an unknown compression algorithom is similar to doing cryptographic analysis and is not simple.

Hope it helps
UnderMine

In reply to Re: Parsing A File by UnderMine
in thread Parsing A File by Anonymous Monk

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