R help - Jul 2009 - .RData signature

Is there a way to identify the beginning and end of an .RData file?
   I am trying to restore lost files on opensolaris where the table of contents
   is overwritten and will be reading the raw disk byte by byte.
   I looked at several files in hex and the end seems different, while most of
   them, but not all begin with RDX2.X
   Thank you.
   Stephen C. Bond

On 7/13/2009 3:38 PM, stenka1 at go.com wrote:
>    Is there a way to identify the beginning and end of an .RData file?
>    I am trying to restore lost files on opensolaris where the table of
contents
>    is overwritten and will be reading the raw disk byte by byte.
>    I looked at several files in hex and the end seems different, while most
of
>    them, but not all begin with RDX2.X
No, there is nothing special written at the end of a file.  Many .RData 
files are compressed (by internal gzip), so the RDX2 header is hidden, 
and you'll see bytes 1F 8B instead.  (I don't think we write the trailer
bytes on the gzip stream, but I'm not sure about that.)

Duncan Murdoch