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From: epperson@adobe.COM (Mark Epperson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: How to see the diff between a windows and dos exe file
Keywords: exe file, windows, dos
Message-ID: <14144@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 91 01:02:45 GMT
References: <1275@idcapd.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Reply-To: epperson@adobe.UUCP (Mark Epperson)
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Lines: 60

In article <1275@idcapd.idca.tds.philips.nl> theo@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (T. van Hunnik) writes:
>
>Hello netters,
>
>We have made an iconic shell on top of windows 3.0, which is able to
>activate windows and non-windows (dos) programs. To enable customization
>of application activation we have made keyboard input redirections.
>This kaeboard input redirection is implemented differently for windows
>applications as for ms-dos applications. This is the reason we like to detect
>the difference between ms-dos and windows executables.
>
>In the MS-DOS Encyclopedia in appendix K we found a detection method
>for new executable files ("MZ" on the first two bytes; on offset 3CH the
>offset to the new executable header, which starts with "NE").
>
>However a few days ago we found out that MS-Word for DOS has this same
>strings and is a new executable file, but no windows applications!
>
>Does anyone out there know whether a better mechanism exist to detect
>the difference between a windows application and a ms-dos applications??
>

Try this...I wrote this to do something similar

main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
	struct {
		int junk[30], offset;
	} exe_data;

	struct {
		int junk[19],
			name_offset,
			junk[2],
			description;
	} def_data;

	struct {
		unsigned char len;
		char string[256];
	} pas_string;

	int fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY|O_BINARY|S_IREAD);
	read(fd, (char *)&exe_data, sizeof(exe_data));
	if (exe_data.offset)
	{
		lseek(fd, exe_data.offset, SEEK_SET);
		read(fd, (char *)&def_data, sizeof(def_data));

		lseek(fd, exe_data.offset + def_data.name_offset, SEEK_SET);
		read(fd, (char *)&pas_string, sizeof(pas_string));
		printf("name: %s\n", pas_string.string);

		lseek(fd, exe_data.offset + def_data.description, SEEK_SET);
		read(fd, (char *)&pas_string, sizeof(pas_string));
		printf("description: %s\n", pas_string.string);
	}
}