How to strip binary data and isolate text in files?

  • Thread starter Thread starter J. Tyler
  • Start date Start date
J

J. Tyler

I'm trying to remove all the binary data from some old Micrografx
Windows Draw 4.0 (*.drw) files and leave only the plain text. That app
won't run properly in Windows XP and I sometimes need to do mass
searches for text in those old files.

Searching their folder as-is gives spotty results because the binary
data must be blocking something. When I open them individually in
Notepad I CAN see all the text but it's too time consuming to search
file-by-file in 100+ files.

Is there a downloadable app that will batch-process many files and
strip out everything but the readable text, then save them? I haven't
had any luck finding one. Most of these *.drw files are around 2kb if
that matters.

JT
 
I'm trying to remove all the binary data from some old Micrografx
Windows Draw 4.0 (*.drw) files and leave only the plain text. That app
won't run properly in Windows XP and I sometimes need to do mass
searches for text in those old files.

Searching their folder as-is gives spotty results because the binary
data must be blocking something. When I open them individually in
Notepad I CAN see all the text but it's too time consuming to search
file-by-file in 100+ files.

Is there a downloadable app that will batch-process many files and
strip out everything but the readable text, then save them? I haven't
had any luck finding one. Most of these *.drw files are around 2kb if
that matters.

JT
Click to expand...

There is GNU binutils http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
In this, there is strings which lists printable strings for file.
This package surely works with cygwin on windows. I am not sure whether it
is available natively for windows too.
cygwin installation is at http://www.cygwin.com
Sanjay
 
I'm trying to remove all the binary data from some old Micrografx
Windows Draw 4.0 (*.drw) files and leave only the plain text. That app
won't run properly in Windows XP and I sometimes need to do mass
searches for text in those old files.

Searching their folder as-is gives spotty results because the binary
data must be blocking something. When I open them individually in
Notepad I CAN see all the text but it's too time consuming to search
file-by-file in 100+ files.

Is there a downloadable app that will batch-process many files and
strip out everything but the readable text, then save them? I haven't
had any luck finding one. Most of these *.drw files are around 2kb if
that matters.

JT
Click to expand...

Hi,
Well, I don't have anything for batch processing, but for extracting
text from files, you can use Peek text extraction tool. You can get
it at http://pad.olsonnetwork.com/downloads/

Hope this helps!

Clint Olson
co-n-co at mochamail dot com
 
(e-mail address removed) (J. Tyler) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...

Hi,
Well, I don't have anything for batch processing, but for extracting
text from files, you can use Peek text extraction tool. You can get
it at http://pad.olsonnetwork.com/downloads/
Click to expand...

FWIW, using a combination of "Simple File Joiner"
(www.peretek.com/sfj.php) and the above app ("Peek 1.1") I was able to
merge all those files into one, insert concatenation dividers and
extract the plain text. So I now have one large file with all the
binary junk removed.

JT
 
FWIW, using a combination of "Simple File Joiner"
(www.peretek.com/sfj.php) and the above app ("Peek 1.1") I was able to
merge all those files into one, insert concatenation dividers and
extract the plain text. So I now have one large file with all the
binary junk removed.

JT
Click to expand...

Great! I'm glad it worked out for you.

Clint
 
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