String References

hi all,
i am trying to doa little app which will read an EXE file and look at the ".text" section for all strings references the progeam uses.
i mean,i want to display all strings that it uses, but the thing is that when u read from an exe file u acn't determine the lenght of the string becuz u read it like a vector of bytes, i.e:
sd Hello World @#$df which in hex its: 73 64 20 48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64 20 20 40 23 24 64 66

my app need to display "Hello World" and not the garbage before, also note some string can come after the "hello world" which i need to display as well.
i hope u can help me figure it out, thnx
ben

I don't think there is a way. The best is probably to "guess" what a string is: It is a succession of at least N letters, numbers and spaces. It will very rarely happen than plain binary code will contain, say, more than 5 letters in a row.

Once you get that, may be you can accept a few more isolated characters included in a string (there is letters, numbers and spaces before and after). Some characters like #,=,.... And then you also need to include punctuation (.,,,?,!, ...).

I guess you have to write your own rules and try them to see if you get a good result.

Whatever happen, it will never be perfect, and you will probably miss a few strings (if they are just a short word), cut some other in two strings (if they contain some special characters) and include one or two pieces of binary code.

I'd be interested if you have a better solution.

If you want to improve the result, you can also use a dictionnary, the only problem with this being that some strings may contains special word (like the program name) that will not be in any dictionnary.

check Win32Dasm app, it gives Perfec String References, thats how i try to do it.
yeah i know about the missing words, than how win32dasm do it?...weird indeed
anybody with some sulotions??

There is a Unix utility call strings that prints out all printable strings. There might be a windows version that will do the same thing.

I remember that - I used it once to find the wizard password in Rogue. It was the only to complete the blasted game!

hhe, but i still need to code such string finder er..

Graham,

Rogue? Boy you must be old. All us modern people played nethack. Superior graphics, better sound. It's almost like your there!

Jeff

nethack didn't have sound when I played it. It had the kitchen sink though.

I still play rogue and advnture (PC version).

Actually, I was thinking of Angband or ZAngband, a Nethack derivative, which has very primitive, repetetive, annoying sounds. Regardless, I was poking fun at those ridiculously addicting games.

Jeff