Format of snapshot file?

[greendot]

I previously posted a suggestion about a command-line snapshot utility. This is a question in regards to me building my own.

Is the snapshot file format published? It looks like an encrypted zip file at first glance.

Thanks,
Joe

[Zoë]

Re: Format of snapshot file?

You can download a description of the snapshot format at http://www.scootersoftware.com/BCSS_Binary_Format.txt

It isn't encrypted, it's just (optionally) compressed. BC always creates compressed snapshots but it supports reading snapshots whether they're compressed or not. If you want to generate compressed snapshots or read the snapshots BC generates you'll need to use the InflateStream/DeflateStream routines from Abbrevia. They should be similar (or identical) to the deflate compression that the Zip format uses, but I haven't looked into it enough to say for certain.

If you just want to generate snapshots and use BC to read them you can just create uncompress snapshots.

The documentation is a little out of date and doesn't covert storing exe/dll version information or Unicode filenames, but if you're just generating them it shouldn't matter. If you need any more information or need an uncompressed sample let me know.