Extract Text From A Binary File - C# Programming Exercise

// Import the necessary namespaces for file handling and basic input/output operations
using System;  
using System.IO;  

// Declare the main Program class
class Program
{
    // Main method where the program starts
    static void Main()
    {
        // Specify the input binary file and output text file paths
        string inputFilePath = "input.bin";  // Replace with the path to your binary file
        string outputFilePath = "output.txt";  // Replace with the desired output file path

        // Try to process the binary file and extract printable characters
        try
        {
            // Open the input binary file using a BinaryReader
            using (BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(File.Open(inputFilePath, FileMode.Open)))
            {
                // Create a StreamWriter to write the extracted characters to the output file
                using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFilePath))
                {
                    // Read the entire file byte by byte
                    while (reader.BaseStream.Position < reader.BaseStream.Length)
                    {
                        // Read the next byte from the file
                        byte b = reader.ReadByte();

                        // Check if the byte represents an ASCII character between 32 and 127, or is 10 (newline) or 13 (carriage return)
                        if ((b >= 32 && b <= 127) || b == 10 || b == 13)
                        {
                            // Write the character to the output file
                            writer.Write((char)b);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

            // Notify the user that the extraction was successful
            Console.WriteLine($"Extracted text has been saved to '{outputFilePath}'");
        }
        catch (Exception ex)  // Catch any errors that may occur during file reading or writing
        {
            // Print the error message to the console
            Console.WriteLine($"Error processing the file: {ex.Message}");
        }
    }
}