Can BRIS Files Be Altered?

[cardinalsfan]

To start off with, I'm not a big tech guy so I hope I can explain what I want to do. I have a few RPM programs that I used to use with some success. Here is my problem. Len Z or whoever does the programming for the RPM software insists on using the DRF speed rating + variant every time a speed rating is called for. We all know that these rating are often missing and are often not accurate when they appear. Back in the day when TSN offered comma delineated files, they substituted the BRIS speed rating for the DRF speed rating so all my RPM programs worked much better than they do now.

So... bottom line, is there anyway to crack open the BRIS single data files and change out the DRF speed ratings for BRIS ratings so my software will read the BRIS ratings and not the DRF ratings?

And if anyone knows Len Z personally, would you please ask him why he designs his software using this highly unreliable DRF + variant (again, often missing from the PP's due to new track surface or distances) instead of the BRIs ratings?

If anyone can make sense of my question and assist, it would be greatly appreciated.

[JustRalph]

I tried years ago to alter them and found that if you make changes they fail to load once you make the alteration.

I wanted to be able to adjust the par times. I could find them, make adjustments for the race, save the file etc. but then the file would appear corrupt when I tried to load it in an app.

This was years ago, but I don't think the structure has changed.

[Tom]

Once you modify the file, open it in Wordpad and go the very. You have to delete a couple of spaces....I'll look it up, been along time.

The file contains both the BRIS speed rating and the DRF SR+TV numbers.
Do you want to put the BRIS SR in the column for the SR+TV numbers?
You could open the file with Excel and mover the columns.

[JustRalph]

Originally Posted by Tom

Once you modify the file, open it in Wordpad and go the very. You have to delete a couple of spaces....I'll look it up, been along time.

The file contains both the BRIS speed rating and the DRF SR+TV numbers.
Do you want to put the BRIS SR in the column for the SR+TV numbers?
You could open the file with Excel and mover the columns.

Very interested if we can then load them in Equisim.

[headhawg]

Originally Posted by Tom

Once you modify the file, open it in Wordpad and go the very. You have to delete a couple of spaces....I'll look it up, been along time.

Did you actually make this work with Wordpad? As Wordpad is more word processor than text editor I would think that it would add some hidden formatting characters that would screw the file up.

And wouldn't this be a helluva lot of work? Manually changing multiple fields of data for multiple horses at multiple tracks....shudder. Good luck with that cardinalsfan.

[cj]

Sure they can, my old program had a "bris replace" function that would replace a bunch of fields with my figures so it could be opened in PP generator.

[headhawg]

You should bring back that old program, cj.

Were there any special tricks/caveats to rewriting/saving the file? I've never tried to do this and it should be fairly straightforward but somehow I felt something would be messed up on the writeback.

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by cardinalsfan

To start off with, I'm not a big tech guy so I hope I can explain what I want to do. I have a few RPM programs that I used to use with some success. Here is my problem. Len Z or whoever does the programming for the RPM software insists on using the DRF speed rating + variant every time a speed rating is called for. We all know that these rating are often missing and are often not accurate when they appear. Back in the day when TSN offered comma delineated files, they substituted the BRIS speed rating for the DRF speed rating so all my RPM programs worked much better than they do now.

So... bottom line, is there anyway to crack open the BRIS single data files and change out the DRF speed ratings for BRIS ratings so my software will read the BRIS ratings and not the DRF ratings?

And if anyone knows Len Z personally, would you please ask him why he designs his software using this highly unreliable DRF + variant (again, often missing from the PP's due to new track surface or distances) instead of the BRIs ratings?

If anyone can make sense of my question and assist, it would be greatly appreciated.

What cj said.

I'm curious. Which files from this BRIS software data file menu are you using, please be specific.

[cj]

Originally Posted by headhawg

You should bring back that old program, cj.

Were there any special tricks/caveats to rewriting/saving the file? I've never tried to do this and it should be fairly straightforward but somehow I felt something would be messed up on the writeback.

No, just really to pay attention to field structure and match it exactly every time.

[GameTheory]

Tom said something interesting -- sounds like the old LFCR problem. Standard Windows/DOS has always added an extra invisible character to the end of each line in text files, so if you opened a file and saved it again in such an editor (even without changing anything), it could break the file for certain programs. So if you don't have an automated program (which of course you need to do it on a regular basis), then you need a plain text editor (not a word processor) that won't change the format or where you can specify it to be saved as UNIX style rather then PC. It's an easy fix in any case.

So you should be able to change any of the BRIS files as long as you preserve the structure for any third-party programs. BRIS's own software used to do a checksum type thing so it wouldn't work with those if you changed something.

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by GameTheory

Tom said something interesting -- sounds like the old LFCR problem. Standard Windows/DOS has always added an extra invisible character to the end of each line in text files, so if you opened a file and saved it again in such an editor (even without changing anything), it could break the file for certain programs. So if you don't have an automated program (which of course you need to do it on a regular basis), then you need a plain text editor (not a word processor) that won't change the format or where you can specify it to be saved as UNIX style rather then PC. It's an easy fix in any case.

I have used the standard Windows app, notepad.exe, successfully. You just need to be careful.

There are other apps which can get you to the same destination but with a somewhat smoother journey, such as Notepad++. Notepad++ has an option which will show you all of the white space characters. It makes things extremely clear, exactly, what are the characters contained in the file. I'm pretty sure Word also has an option to display white space character.

So you should be able to change any of the BRIS files as long as you preserve the structure for any third-party programs. BRIS's own software used to do a checksum type thing so it wouldn't work with those if you changed something.

Yes, and programs not from BRIS also will use embedded check sums. That is where I was going to go depending upon how my question posted above was answered.

[Tom]

I could have used Notepad....been a while.

[GameTheory]

Originally Posted by DJofSD

Yes, and programs not from BRIS also will use embedded check sums. That is where I was going to go depending upon how my question posted above was answered.

They WON'T use them -- they CAN'T use them because how they are calculated is (should be) a secret. If anyone could use them, that would mean everyone would know how they are calculated, and if you altered the file you could also alter the checksum to match -- the checksum is contained in the file in an unused field as gobbledygook (e.g. when you see a field like "uUI83ekq82"). I do think some programs try to do some verification of the file date so you can't keep changing it to remain forever within a "free trial" period, but to most third-party programs it is just a csv file to read-in -- you could create the entire thing from scratch if you wanted. (Now of course the program may expect the fields to be a certain way, or have values in a certain range, etc etc...)

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by GameTheory

They WON'T use them -- they CAN'T use them because how they are calculated is (should be) a secret. If anyone could use them, that would mean everyone would know how they are calculated, and if you altered the file you could also alter the checksum to match -- the checksum is contained in the file in an unused field as gobbledygook (e.g. when you see a field like "uUI83ekq82"). I do think some programs try to do some verification of the file date so you can't keep changing it to remain forever within a "free trial" period, but to most third-party programs it is just a csv file to read-in -- you could create the entire thing from scratch if you wanted. (Now of course the program may expect the fields to be a certain way, or have values in a certain range, etc etc...)

I'm not sure if you understood my post -- I certainly do not understand where your coming from.

If you want an example, look the the BRIS Hat files. Those are used by the old PIRCO/O'Henry House apps like Energy! or AOdds. They expect those check sums to be present.

Whether or not they can be replaced, well, that's an open question but I suspect the answer is yes. The easy solution: know what the algorithm is to generate what goes into the HAT files and then make the appropriate substitute in the last field where the check sum appears. The hard answer: try to reverse engineer the values. I'm sure those with good crypto insights and skills could figure it out.

P.S. And, as far as being able to read those files, even with a check sum present, I have plenty of my own apps which do read them, no problem. The files are, as you stated, just CSV style files and your data is exactly the same as the other single file format data -- at least the last time I cared to look which as been a long time now.

[GameTheory]

Originally Posted by DJofSD

I'm not sure if you understood my post -- I certainly do not understand where your coming from.

If you want an example, look the the BRIS Hat files. Those are used by the old PIRCO/O'Henry House apps like Energy! or AOdds. They expect those check sums to be present.

But AOdds is not "third-party" -- it is on BRIS. BRIS is protecting itself. So AOdds and Neurax and Capsheet and Multicaps, etc all use the checksum -- BRIS programs. (Some of those may use binary files, I don't remember.)

Third-party is everything that you don't download from BRIS but that can use BRIS files: Jcapper, Equisim, etc etc. But those programs can often also use DRF files or whatever (or you could fake it cause they don't use the checksum).