Hachoir project

Hachoir is a Python library used to represent of a binary file as a tree of Python objects. Each object has a type, a value, an address, etc. The goal is to be able to know the meaning of each bit in a file.

Why using slow Python code instead of fast hardcoded C code? Hachoir has many interesting features:

• Autofix: Hachoir is able to open invalid / truncated files
• Lazy: Open a file is very fast since no information is read from file, data are read and/or computed when the user ask for it
• Types: Hachoir has many predefined field types (integer, bit, string, etc.) and supports string with charset (ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, UTF-16, ...)
• Addresses and sizes are stored in bit, so flags are stored as classic fields
• Endian: You have to set endian once, and then number are converted in the right endian
• Editor: Using Hachoir representation of data, you can edit, insert, remove data and then save in a new file.

Website: http://bitbucket.org/haypo/hachoir/wiki/hachoir-core

Installation

For the installation, use setup.py or see: http://bitbucket.org/haypo/hachoir/wiki/Install

hachoir-core 1.3.3 (2010-02-26)

• Add writelines() method to UnicodeStdout

hachoir-core 1.3.2 (2010-01-28)

• MANIFEST.in includes also the documentation

hachoir-core 1.3.1 (2010-01-21)

• Create MANIFEST.in to include ChangeLog and other files for setup.py

hachoir-core 1.3 (2010-01-20)

• Add more charsets to GenericString: CP874, WINDOWS-1250, WINDOWS-1251, WINDOWS-1254, WINDOWS-1255, WINDOWS-1256,WINDOWS-1257, WINDOWS-1258, ISO-8859-16
• Fix initLocale(): return charset even if config.unicode_stdout is False
• initLocale() leave sys.stdout and sys.stderr unchanged if the readline module is loaded: Hachoir can now be used correctly with ipython
• HachoirError: replace "message" attribute by "text" to fix Python 2.6 compatibility (message attribute is deprecated)
• StaticFieldSet: fix Python 2.6 warning, object.__new__() takes one only argument (the class).
• Fix GenericFieldSet.readMoreFields() result: don't count the number of added fields in a loop, use the number of fields before/after the operation using len()
• GenericFieldSet.__iter__() supports iterable result for _fixFeedError() and _stopFeeding()
• New seekable field set implementation in hachoir_core.field.new_seekable_field_set

hachoir-core 1.2.1 (2008-10)

• Create configuration option "unicode_stdout" which avoid replacing stdout and stderr by objects supporting unicode string
• Create TimedeltaWin64 file type
• Support WINDOWS-1252 and WINDOWS-1253 charsets for GenericString
• guessBytesCharset() now supports ISO-8859-7 (greek)
• durationWin64() is now deprecated, use TimedeltaWin64 instead

hachoir-core 1.2 (2008-09)

• Create Field.getFieldType(): describe a field type and gives some useful informations (eg. the charset for a string)
• Create TimestampUnix64
• GenericString: only guess the charset once; if the charset attribute if not set, guess it when it's asked by the user.

hachoir-core 1.1 (2008-04-01)

Main change: string values are always encoded as Unicode. Details:

• Create guessBytesCharset() and guessStreamCharset()
• GenericString.createValue() is now always Unicode: if charset is not specified, try to guess it. Otherwise, use default charset (ISO-8859-1)
• RawBits: add createRawDisplay() to avoid slow down on huge fields
• Fix SeekableFieldSet.current_size (use offset and not current_max_size)
• GenericString: fix UTF-16-LE string with missing nul byte
• Add __nonzero__() method to GenericTimestamp
• All stream errors now inherit from StreamError (instead of HachoirError), and create and OutputStreamError
• humanDatetime(): strip microseconds by default (add optional argument to keep them)

hachoir-core 1.0 (2007-07-10)

Version 1.0.1 changelog:

• Rename parser.tags to parser.PARSER_TAGS to be compatible with future hachoir-parser 1.0

Visible changes:

• New field type: TimestampUUID60
• SeekableFieldSet: fix __getitem__() method and implement __iter__() and __len__() methods, so it can now be used in hachoir-wx
• String value is always Unicode, even on conversion error: use
• OutputStream: add readBytes() method
• Create Language class using ISO-639-2
• Add hachoir_core.profiler module to run a profiler on a function
• Add hachoir_core.timeout module to call a function with a timeout

Minor changes:

• Fix many spelling mistakes
• Dict: use iteritems() instead of items() for faster operations on huge dictionaries