SuperSnooper for Windows and DOS Copyright (c) 1992 By Clifton Karnes
All Rights Reserved


SuperSnooper is a Windows and  DOS program (more about this a little
later) that reads any file, especially binary files (with extensions
like com, exe, dll, and sys), and displays the ASCII strings in the
file. This may sound like a crazy thing to do at first, but after you
think about it, you'll see that SuperSnooper has several uses. Before we
discuss these, however, for those who want to start using the program
right away, here's SuperSnooper's command line syntax

                            ss filename [/o]

The name of the SuperSnooper program is ss and filename is any file you
want to snoop. The optional /o parameter will prefix each line with its
hexadecimal offset in the file.


HOW TO USE SUPERSNOOPER As I mentioned earlier, SuperSnooper is both a
Windows and DOS program, so you can use it at the DOS prompt or in
Windows. This may sound impossible, but try it to convince yourself.

If run from DOS, SuperSnooper displays the strings it finds on the
screen without stopping. To display just a screenful of info at a time,
use the | more filter, like this:

                           ss filename | more

With this form of the command, SuperSnooper will pause after each
screen.

In Windows, the strings will simply fill a window that you can scroll
back. You can copy text from this window and paste it into other
applications.

It's also worth noting that in Windows, you can drag any file to ss.exe
in File Manager's file list and SuperSnooper will snoop that file
immediately.

Both versions support redirection to a printer or a file. For example,
to snoop command.com and redirect SuperSnooper's output to a file, you'd
use the following command:

                       ss command.com >command.ss

You can, of course, substitute any filename for command.ss above.

That's how to use SuperSnooper in a nutshell.


WAYS TO USE SUPERSNOOPER *   First, it's simply fun looking at the
strings locked inside binary files that were never intended to be
viewed.

*   Find out the language tools a program's creator used. This can be
very interesting. I remember reading a article by a software developer
praising one company's compiler. I snooped his product's exe file to
discover that he actually used a different compiler on the program.

*   If you're faced with an unfamiliar program or one where you don't
remember the command line switches, especially if you don't remember the
switch you type to get a help screen displaying those command line
switches, run SuperSnooper on the file. If there's ASCII help in the
file, SuperSnooper will find it.

*   If you want a printout of a program's help screen, especially if you
want to take the help information and edit it, SuperSnooper is the tool
to use.

*   Finally, if a word processing file becomes corrupted and your word
processor won't read it, SuperSnooper can salvage the text in the file.
Just run SuperSnooper on the document and it will find all the strings
that aren't corrupted and display them.

______________________________________________________________________
SuperSnooper for Windows and DOS is based on Tom Campbell's DOS program
Snooper, which appeared in the May 1989 issue of COMPUTE's PC Magazine.

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