VC Language - NTFS streams and document summary info.

Author

NTFS streams and document summary info.

David Webber

2005-11-25, 3:59 am

Can anyone point me to some information about NTFS streams and in
particular what the format is for the information (author keywords
etc) which you can add by right clicking on a document file in
Windows Explorer, and using "Properties"?

Coming into the 21st century, I thought I'd give my program some
knowledge of this.

I was pointed to

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d.../html/ntfs5.asp

which tells how to enumerate the streams associated with a file
using the ::BackupRead() API.

I did this with a document file to which I had added some
information. The results are interesing.

The streams are

(1) "" (which I guess is the main stream)

(2) ":DocumentSummaryInformation:$DATA"

(3) ":SummaryInformation:$DATA"

(4) ":{4c8cc155-6c1e-11d1-8e41-00c04fb9386d}:$DATA"

Numbers 2 and 3 look promising except that the 2nd character in each
is Unicode character 5 - which is a control character which I didn't
expect to find there. (Lord knows what he last one is - I looked -
just in case - for the ID in my registry, but it doesn't seem to be
there.)

Some particular questions arise:

Are the stream names the same in all language versions of Windows?
What is the character 5 doing there?
What is the format of the information stored by the shell in these
streams?

There must surely be some information on this somewhere?

Dave
--
David Webber
Author MOZART the music processor for Windows -
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/support see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mzusers/mailinglist.htm

David Webber

2005-11-25, 7:58 am

"David Webber" <dave@musical.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eGw7mGa8FHA.3416@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

> Can anyone point me to some information about NTFS streams...

Right after sending this I discovered that the
":\005DocumentSummaryInformation:$DATA"
is indeed documented and I need an appropriate COM interface
(possibly IStream) to it.

Still hazy on details though, so if anyone has any useful
pointers...?

Dave
--
David Webber
Author MOZART the music processor for Windows -
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/support see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mzusers/mailinglist.htm

adebaene@club-internet.fr

2005-11-25, 7:58 am

David Webber wrote:
> Can anyone point me to some information about NTFS streams and in
> particular what the format is for the information (author keywords
> etc) which you can add by right clicking on a document file in
> Windows Explorer, and using "Properties"?
>
> Coming into the 21st century, I thought I'd give my program some
> knowledge of this.

Search MSDN for "Structured Storage NTFS implementation". A good
starting point may be
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...start_page.asp.

For a description of the various fields that make up a summary and an
explanation concerning the \005, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...roperty_set.asp

Arnaud
MVP - VC

David Webber

2005-11-25, 7:02 pm

<adebaene@club-internet.fr> wrote in message
news:1132922064.280357.12250@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

> Search MSDN for "Structured Storage NTFS implementation". A good
> starting point may be
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...start_page.asp.
>
> For a description of the various fields that make up a summary and
> an
> explanation concerning the \005, see
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...roperty_set.asp

Thanks - I'm now gradually working my way through it. There's a
lot of stuff, new to me, to have to learn here.

Dave

--
David Webber
Author MOZART the music processor for Windows -
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/support see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mzusers/mailinglist.htm

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