How to Embed Text Files as Resources in Native Windows Applications?

Embed Text File as a Resource in Native Windows Applications

In your C Windows application, you can embed a text file as a resource to avoid having it as a separate file that's loaded and parsed at runtime.

Creating a User-Defined Resource

To embed a text file, create a user-defined resource with the following format in a resource file:

nameID typeID filename

where:

• nameID: A unique 16-bit unsigned integer identifying the resource.
• typeID: A unique 16-bit unsigned integer greater than 255 identifying the resource type.
• filename: The path to the text file to be embedded.

For example:

#define TEXTFILE        256
#define IDR_MYTEXTFILE  101

IDR_MYTEXTFILE TEXTFILE "mytextfile.txt"

Loading the Resource

To load the embedded text file, use the following code:

DWORD size = 0;
const char* data = NULL;
LoadFileInResource(IDR_MYTEXTFILE, TEXTFILE, size, data);

where:

• IDR_MYTEXTFILE is the nameID of the resource.
• TEXTFILE is the typeID of the resource.
• size is the size of the embedded text file in bytes.
• data is a pointer to the data in the embedded text file.

Access the Contents of the Embedded Text File

The data pointer points to the contents of the embedded text file. You can access the text as follows:

char* buffer = new char[size+1];
::memcpy(buffer, data, size);
buffer[size] = 0; // NULL terminator
::printf("Contents of text file: %s\n", buffer); // Print as ASCII text

Limitations

Note that the data in the embedded text file is constant and cannot be modified directly through the retrieved pointer. To modify it, use the BeginUpdateResource(), UpdateResource(), and EndUpdateResource() functions.

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