About the Examples

You'll find short code examples associated with some of the articles, but in most cases the full examples are not included in the file format articles themselves. We have done this mainly because many of the code examples are quite long, and we wanted to make it easier to find information in the book. All of the code is included on the accompanying CD-ROM.

The examples are, in most cases, C functions which parse and read (or write) format files. The examples are just that--examples--and are meant to give you a jump-start reading and writing image files. These are generally not stand-alone applications. In most cases, we wrote this code ourselves during the writing of the book or as part of other projects we've worked on. In some cases, code was contributed by other programmers or by those who own the file format specifications described in this book. We've also referred you to the source code for certain software packages on the CD-ROM that handle specific types of file formats--for example, the libtiff software, which provides extensive code illustrating the handling of TIFF files. These packages provide more extensive and useful examples.

Our own examples are usually written in a platform-independent manner. There is a bias for integer word lengths of 32 bits or less, for the simple reason that the overwhelming majority of files written to date have been on machines with a 32-bit or smaller word size. All examples and listings in this book and on the CD-ROM are written in ANSI C.

The code is provided for illustrative purposes only. In some cases, we have spent considerable time constructing transparent examples, and it's not necessarily an easy job. So be forewarned: if you use our code, absolutely no attempt has been made to optimize it. That's your job!

Can you use our code freely? In most cases, yes. We and O'Reilly & Associates grant you a royalty-free right to reproduce and distribute any sample code in the text and companion disk written by the authors of this book, provided that you:

Distribute the sample code only in conjunction with and as a part of your software product
Do not use our names or the O'Reilly & Associates name to market your software product
Include a copyright notice (both in your documentation and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product) in the form:
```
Portions Copyright (C) 1994, 1996 by James D. Murray and
   William vanRyper
```

Please also note the disclaimer statements on the copyright page of this book.

Note as well that it is your responsibility to obtain permission for the use of any source code included on the CD-ROM that is not written by the authors of this book.