(I’ve edited this for clarity, and changed the actual question a bit based on EOL’s answer)
I’m trying to translate the following function in C to Python but failing miserably (see C code below). As I understand it, it takes four 1-byte chars starting from the memory location pointed to by from, treats them as unsigned long ints in order to give each one 4 bytes of space, and does some bitshifting to arrange them as a big-endian 32-bit integer. It’s then used in an algorithm of checking file validity. (from the Treaty of Babel)
static int32 read_alan_int(unsigned char *from)
{
return ((unsigned long int) from[3])| ((unsigned long int)from[2] << 8) |
((unsigned long int) from[1]<<16)| ((unsigned long int)from[0] << 24);
}
/*
The claim algorithm for Alan files is:
* For Alan 3, check for the magic word
* load the file length in blocks
* check that the file length is correct
* For alan 2, each word between byte address 24 and 81 is a
word address within the file, so check that they're all within
the file
* Locate the checksum and verify that it is correct
*/
static int32 claim_story_file(void *story_file, int32 extent)
{
unsigned char *sf = (unsigned char *) story_file;
int32 bf, i, crc=0;
if (extent < 160) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
if (memcmp(sf,"ALAN",4))
{ /* Identify Alan 2.x */
bf=read_alan_int(sf+4);
if (bf > extent/4) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
for (i=24;i<81;i+=4)
if (read_alan_int(sf+i) > extent/4) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
for (i=160;i<(bf*4);i++)
crc+=sf[i];
if (crc!=read_alan_int(sf+152)) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
return VALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
}
else
{ /* Identify Alan 3 */
bf=read_alan_int(sf+12);
if (bf > (extent/4)) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
for (i=184;i<(bf*4);i++)
crc+=sf[i];
if (crc!=read_alan_int(sf+176)) return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
}
return INVALID_STORY_FILE_RV;
}
I’m trying to reimplement this in Python. For implementing the read_alan_int function, I would think that importing struct and doing struct.unpack_from('>L', data, offset) would work. However, on valid files, this always returns 24 for the value bf, which means that the for loop is skipped.
def read_alan_int(file_buffer, i):
i0 = ord(file_buffer[i]) * (2 ** 24)
i1 = ord(file_buffer[i + 1]) * (2 ** 16)
i2 = ord(file_buffer[i + 2]) * (2 ** 8)
i3 = ord(file_buffer[i + 3])
return i0 + i1 + i2 + i3
def is_a(file_buffer):
crc = 0
if len(file_buffer) < 160:
return False
if file_buffer[0:4] == 'ALAN':
# Identify Alan 2.x
bf = read_alan_int(file_buffer, 4)
if bf > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(24, 81, 4):
if read_alan_int(file_buffer, i) > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(160, bf * 4):
crc += ord(file_buffer[i])
if crc != read_alan_int(file_buffer, 152):
return False
return True
else:
# Identify Alan 3.x
#bf = read_long(file_buffer, 12, '>')
bf = read_alan_int(file_buffer, 12)
print bf
if bf > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(184, bf * 4):
crc += ord(file_buffer[i])
if crc != read_alan_int(file_buffer, 176):
return False
return True
return False
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys, struct
data = open(sys.argv[1], 'rb').read()
print is_a(data)
…but the damn thing still returns 24. Unfortunately, my C skills are non-existent so I’m having trouble getting the original program to print some debug output so I can know what bf is supposed to be.
What am I doing wrong?
Ok, so I’m apparently doing read_alan_int correctly. However, what’s failing for me is the check that the first 4 characters are “ALAN”. All of my test files fail this test. I’ve changed the code to remove this if/else statement and to instead just take advantage of early returns, and now all of my unit tests pass. So, on a practical level, I’m done. However, I’ll keep the question open to address the new problem: how can I possibly wrangle the bits to get “ALAN” out of the first 4 chars?
def is_a(file_buffer):
crc = 0
if len(file_buffer) < 160:
return False
#if file_buffer.startswith('ALAN'):
# Identify Alan 2.x
bf = read_long(file_buffer, 4)
if bf > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(24, 81, 4):
if read_long(file_buffer, i) > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(160, bf * 4):
crc += ord(file_buffer[i])
if crc == read_long(file_buffer, 152):
return True
# Identify Alan 3.x
crc = 0
bf = read_long(file_buffer, 12)
if bf > len(file_buffer)/4:
return False
for i in range(184, bf * 4):
crc += ord(file_buffer[i])
if crc == read_long(file_buffer, 176):
return True
return False
Ah, I think I’ve got it. Note that the description says
which I read as saying that there’s a magic word in Alan 3, but not in Alan 2. However, your code goes the other way, even though the C code only assumes that the ALAN exists for Alan 3 files.
Why? Because you don’t speak C, so you guessed — naturally enough! — that memcmp would return (the equivalent of a Python) True if the first four characters of sf and “ALAN” are equal.. but it doesn’t. memcmp returns 0 if the contents are equal, and nonzero if they differ.
And that seems to be the way it works: