Determine unknown data file type

[MisterC]

Hi folks,
I'm trying to import a data file into MS Access without knowing what type of data file it is. The file's extension is E00 (which means nothing to me...) and my first guess (dBASE) doesn't appear to be correct.

Does anyone know how to analyze a file to determine it's type?

Thanks for your help!
Charlton

 

[Sheco]

If you open it with Notepad do you see all plain text are does it have some "funky" characters?

PS: Don't save it with notepad, just open it and take a peek.

 

[MisterC]

Thanks for that quick reply -

There isn't any plain text, just binary looking stuff - spaces and rectangles and accented characters. And no recognizable words or file type description in the characters.

 

[Sheco]

Ah well I dunno.

I looked here:

http://filext.com/

It says the file may be an ESRI ArchMaps file.

So is it possibly a GIS map thingy?

 

[MisterC]

Nope, it is definitely a data file. Thanks anyway.

 

[Sheco]

The maps are defined by data points.

I don't know much about GIS but I do know that the map features are saved in a database table and that the viewer software reads this data and uses it to render a map.

Also i know from using a hex editor to repair a bunch of corrupted DBase files that only part of a DBase file would show up as funky characters in Notepad... the header and numeric fields would be this way because they are stored as byte data... the plain character fields would be readable with notepad.

Sorry I couldnt be of more help.

 

[fredericofonseca]

If you open the file in hexadecimal mode (e.g. with Quick View plus or with VIM, (

http://www.vim.org),

what is the content of the first 100 bytes?

And if the file is less than 10k, can you supply me with a copy to have a look at?

mail is frederico_fonseca at the obvious domain below

Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[MisterC]

Hi Frederico, thanks for your response.
The file isn't much to look at, but here you go:

0000000: c100 6666 0000 0001 0100 4b00 0000 0d00  ..ff......K.....
0000010: 0002 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 0000 001f  ................
0000020: 1702 1901 691f 1702 1901 6900 0000 0000  ....i.....i.....
0000030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
0000040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 00fc 0c02 1f00  ................
0000050: 1f17 0a00 0000 00ff 02c1 0065 6500 0000  ...........ee...
0000060: 0101 004b 0000 000d 0000 0100 0000 0000  ...K............
0000070: 0000 0100 0000 0000 2006 031a 0169 2006  ........ ....i .
0000080: 031a 0169 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ...i............
0000090: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ................
00000a0: 0000 0000 fc0c 0101 0020 060a 0000 0000  ......... ......