I am writing file conversion code from a proprietary file format to one more generic. My goal is to support multiple versions of the manufacturer's file format.
I have a multiple versions of the same proprietary headers. The headers define various structs which comprise the main file header (the file is simply a large header followed by raw data).
I need to read the first 4 bytes of the source file to determine the file version. The file version, in turn, tells me which version of the C-structs was used to create the file.
The issues are:
- I can't modify the proprietary headers
- The headers do not use namespaces or classes
- There are a good handful of macros defined in the headers
Possible solutions:
- Build different converter binaries for each file version type :-(
- Inconvenient for both user and developer
- Dynamically load libraries for each version
- The converter is plugin-oriented, so there's already a lot of this happening
I have tried hacking with namespaces:
namespace version1 {
#include "version1.h"
}
namespace version2 {
#include "version2.h"
}
int main (void) {
version1::header *hdr = new version1::header;
return 0;
}
But this won't work because of include guards, and because there are multiple macros are redefined in each header.
Is there an elegant way to handle this?