Data Elements, Include external files

[Olivier]

I'd like to distribute my app under one EXE that contains everything. My app uses an array that loads the file array.arr (filename isn't calculated with an expression) at the start of the frame.
I'd rather have array.arr been read directly from the EXE file without the need for it to be extracted to user's hard disk in a temporary folder. How do I do that?

-Must I check "Include external files" in the application properties?
-Must I add arrar.arr into the Data Elements?
-Must I do both?
-Is it better to have array.arr at the exact location than the MFA?

I tried everything above without success, the app doesn't find array.arr when tested on another machine. I must be missing something. EDIT: I'm using R243.

[Dines]

Hmm. How exactly are you referring to the file?

You have to select it using the file selector, you can't open the expression editor and just type "c:\folder\file.txt". Even though it's not being evaluated (as such), it's still an expression.

To test it on your own system, simply build the app and then rename the file (i usually add the word 'gone' to the end, so it becomes "test_GONE.txt").

(Make sure you rename the file AFTER you've built the app!)

[Olivier]

Like I said above the filename isn't calculated with an expression, I've selected it using the file selector.
That's really weird. I've renamed array.arr to something else and launched the EXE on the dev machine. Everything was ok. And again it didn't work on another machine.

[LazyCoder]

Why is it so essential that it is included in the .exe? Why not just have a file outside the main executable, but have it encrypted, then load the encrypted file, and decrypt it, that way it is never unencrypted where somebody could access it.

[Olivier]

Yes at first I was thinking about encrypting the external files. I was using blowfish but I couldn't make it work. I was able to make blowfish load the array file and decipher it, but then I didn't know how to pass the data to the Array object.
When blowfish loads a file and deciphers it, is this done in memory?