Hello group -

How can I decrypt a file to memory in VB6? I want to do it WITHOUT creating an intermediate decrypted file on file system.

I see the ReadFile method, but it reaturns a byte array, and I can't figure out how to convert the byte array to a string. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

David

I have resolved the problem. I'll post the solution here in case anyone else runs into this issue.

The problem:
When encrypting large strings (1 million or more characters), encryption was very slow in VB6 environment. I was attempting to use some of the file encyption methods to work around this problem, but I found a better way.

The solution:
The problem was in the BinaryToHex function provided in one of the sample apps. String operations in VB6 are hellishly slow, and concantenating 1 million plus characters was bringing the process to a standstill. I rewrote the function as follows, and it's now much faster:

Private Function BinaryToHex(ByRef vaBinaryValue As Variant) As String
Dim i As Long
Dim buffer() As String

ReDim buffer(LenB(vaBinaryValue) - 1)

If (VarType(vaBinaryValue) And vbArray) = vbArray Then
For i = 0 To LenB(vaBinaryValue) - 1
buffer(i) = (Right("0" & Hex(CLng(vaBinaryValue(i))), 2))
Next i
End If

BinaryToHex = Join(buffer, "")

End Function

Hope that helps someone else out there someday.