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hexdbf

Hex to dec misunderstanding

I`m trying to get clear with dbf file structure.
I read that

offset 4 - 7 Number of records

I opened random dbf file with 10148 rows in hex editor and here is offset:

A4 27 00 00

I try to convert it to dec. Online converter says: 42023 But my hex editor shows 10148enter image description here

I tried to reverse conversion and online converter said that

10148 = 27 A4

Byte order is reversed

I think that there is about Big And little endian byte order.

The question is how to define which order is used in offset?

Solution

  • dBASE was originaly produced for MS/DOS using the 8086 serie little endian processor. AFAIK, the byte order is consistently little endian in any (numeric) field of a dbf file including offsets.. But I must admit I could not find any reference for that...