“descript.ion” file spec?

Question

There appears to be a somewhat standard "descript.ion" file in Windows programs universe which provides meta data for all/some of the files in a given directory.

I know there are various programs which write this file (example: NewsBin, UseNet downloader) and read it (Example: "FAR", a file manager mimicking old Norton Commander).

I'm writing my own file indexer, and would like to add the ability to parse and use the info from "descript.ion" files.

The problem I have is that I have not been able to find an actual spec for the file, despine much googling.

I reverse engineered it as best I could, but I'm not certain whether I captured 100% of the possible details, so I figured I'd ask SO.

Here are example lines from the file:

"Rus Song1.mp3" SovietMus 1/2, rus_song@gmail.com, Fri Aug 08 00:46:27 2008
RusSong2.mp3 SovietMus 2/2, rus_song@gmail.com, Fri Aug 08 01:46:22 2008

As it seems the structure is:

1. First "token" is a file name.

   • If the token starts with any letter but double quote, the token ends at the first space character.

   • If the token starts with the double quote, the end of token is the following double quote

   • Not sure what happens if filename contains a double quote, IIRC it's illegal in Windows filesystems, so escaping the quote may be a moot question)

2. Last token (end of line to the very last comma moving backwards) is a timestamp.

3. Second to last token (the very last comma to second-to-last comma moving backwards) is the name of the poster from the Usenet newsgroup. I'm not quite sure what happens in generic format since the only descript.ion files I saw were from NewsBin that is obviously Usenet centric.

4. Everything in between is a description, in NewsBin's case coming from post's subject.

QUESTIONs:

• Does anyone know of a bit more official "descript.ion" file spec/documentation? (or, at elast, have your own knowledge of those files and can verify my spec)

• Does anyone know of any other programs that read or write this file?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The original usage of DESCRIPT.ION was to provide longer more descriptive names to 8.3 filenames; all it had was the shortname and a longer description. As you've found, others have co-opted the name with varying formats and usages. Frankly speaking, I don't think you'll find any specific commonality among the various usages.

Answer 2

The description files on my system are from Total Commander as well. They follow the basic spec mentioned in the other answers:

Filename Text I typed to describe the file
"Long filename" Some text

Each line ends in a normal Windows line break.

In addition, the program stores multi-line comments as follows:

Filename This is the first line\\nSecond line\\nLast line\x04\xc2

Here, I mean that the descript.ion file contains a backslash and a letter 'n' where I typed a line break, and two special characters 04 C2 at the end of the comment. In addition, the line is ended by a Windows line break 0D 0A.

Apparently, the two extra characters at the end of the line signal the end of a multiline comment. If I remove them, the comment is rendered as a single line in the GUI, and the '\n' sequences are displayed literally.

Answer 3

Format is simple: FileName remainder of the line is a description of the file

https://jpsoft.com/ascii/descfile.txt

(Wayback Machine)

Answer 4

the answer above looks correct for me, just a addition:

from http://filext.com/file-extension/ION The ION file type is primarily associated with '4DOS'. Note: Norton Utilities also uses 4DOS.

http://www.optimasc.com/products/fileid/4dos-descext.pdf

Collected links to 4DOS description-aware programs of all kind and 4DOS tools. http://www.4dos.info/4tools.htm

http://drupal.org/node/289988

Answer 5

The descript.ion file is extensively used in the file management utility "total commander", a shareware found in www.ghisler.com. From version 7.5 of TC, it can have length of 4096 bytes. I have been using it extensively to annotate my files without any issues. You may look up different user's experience at the total commander users forum.