Hi Daniel!
   Thank you very much for the reply!

   I'm not certain how to incorporate those. 

   Looking at the struct I posted, I'm first of all not quite certain it's right, but let's assume it is for the purposes of this question.  In C, a Str255 is really just a 256-byte string, right?  Ok, so let's say we have some data in projectPath that's not quite that long.  Now we want to access the next relevant field, userName.  How does C know where to get it from, because according to the struct that should be 257 bytes later, right?  But it's not, because projectPath is a Pascal string and starts with the length, then the data, then the \0, and then the pad, right?

   Is it even possible to use a C struct to handle this data?

Thank you so much for the help!

Hi guys!
   I'm not a super great C programmer, but I'm trying to knock out a "simple" MPW Tool to print the data contained in the 'ckid' resource that gets created by Projector when you check out a file.  Unfortunately, most of the data I want is in Pascal strings.

   The format of the 'ckid' resource is documented in Appendix A in the "Bldg & Mng Progs in MPW 2ed.pdf" file that comes with MPW.  But the data structure is only described in Pascal format.  Here is a C struct that I made that seems to me like it should be equivalent:

#include <time.h>

typedef unsigned long uLong;
typedef unsigned short uShort;
typedef struct{
uLong checkSum; // checkSum
long LOC; // location identifier
short version; // ckid version number
short readOnly; // checkout state; 0=modifiable
char branch; // if modifiable & byte not 0, then branch was made on checkout
Boolean modifyReadOnly; // Did user execute "ModifyReadOnly"?
uShort history; //  1 if history present, 0 if not
uShort commentLength; // length of current comment if history is present
time_t checkoutDate; // date and time of checkout
time_t modificationDate; // modification date of file
uLong PIDa; // PID.a
uLong PIDb; // PID.b
short userID; // user ID
short fileID; // file ID
short revisionID; // revision ID
Str255 projectPath; // project path
char pad1;
Str255 userName; // user name
char pad2;
Str255 revisionNum; // revision number
char pad3;
Str255 fileName; // filename
char pad4;
Str255 taskDesc; // task
char pad5;
Str255 comment; // comment
char pad6;
} CKIDRec, *CKIDPtr, **CKIDHandle;

In the program, I do something like this (Again, not sure this is the best, but it sort of works):

Handle ResHandle;
CKIDRec CkidRecord;

refnum = openresfile(argv[1]);

ResHandle = Get1Resource('ckid',128);

HLock(ResHandle);

CkidRecord = **(CKIDRec **)ResHandle;

This works pretty well, and I can access everything up to projectPath using CkidRecord.checkSum, etc.  But once I try to get to the Str255's, it starts returning garbage or crashing.

So I found another example for dealing with Pascal strings, and added this:

StringPtr projectPathPtr, userNamePtr;
Str255 projectPath, userName;
Size bytes;

projectPathPtr = (**(CKIDHandle)ResHandle).projectPath;
bytes = (**(CKIDHandle)ResHandle).projectPath[0] + 1;
BlockMove(projectPathPtr, projectPath, bytes);

userNamePtr = (**(CKIDHandle)ResHandle).userName;
bytes = (**(CKIDHandle)ResHandle).userName[0] + 1;
BlockMove(userNamePtr, userName, bytes);

After that, 'projectPath' contains the Project Path, but there's garbage in front of and behind it.  'userName' always contains garbage.  I can view what should be the correct data using ResEdit, however.

I wonder if it would be easier to take everything in the struct after revisionID as one big chunk and then manually parse through it, but I've tried that a few times and haven't come up with a scheme that works and doesn't crash my machine. 

Does all that make sense?  Does anyone have any suggestions or examples of code that uses a similar stucture and how to deal with it?  Or am I looking at this all wrong?

Many thanks in advance!

Speaking of tutorials.. Here's another one that describes trick not mentioned anywhere else on the web:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6742

Good one!

Speaking of tutorials.. Here's another one that describes trick not mentioned anywhere else on the web:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6742

..I just realised that you can boot from a IDE drive when attached via a cheap "USB<>IDE" adaptor. That makes life easier for installation for me without an optical drive since I've got the v9 image put to an IDE drive via iBored.