How to read Visual FoxPro .vcx files as plaintext?

Question

I want to read VFP vcx files as plaintext in python. Any tips on how I should go about it?

I understand that the mime type of the file is an octet stream, which is typically associated with binary files. Also apparent is that VFP uses vcx file in combination with vct files to display the initial Source code.

I have been trying some static code analysis methods to extract the information that I need from the vct file, but I had no luck since the control characters mess up even the legible parts of the vct file, which is very hard to automate.

I have searched for weeks. This is my last resort before going into VFP and scraping it manually.

Any help is mich appreciated.

Answer 1

You have a few options:

• Fernando Bozzo's Foxbin is a github repository with some VFP code to convert vcx, scx ... to prg files.
• In VFP tools menu there is View Class Code option
• There is scctext that ships with VFP.
• All the above generate VFP prg files which are text. But probably that is not what you meant. Then you could simply open a vcx as a table (it is a table with a vcx extension) and read all the object names, properties, methods and such.

Answer 2

I want to read VFP vcx files as plaintext in python

For what it's worth, *.vcx / *.vct files are just renamed dBase/xBase *.DBF/ *.FPT file pairs, just like *.scx \ *.sct VFP Form files. So you could probably use something like dbfread