Developer builds custom binary file format ZAF from scratch using C/C++

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A software developer created a custom binary container format called ZAF using C and C++, aiming to understand how file formats fundamentally work. The format allows an entire directory of files to be packed into a single .zaf file and later restored to its original structure. ZAF is structured with magic bytes, version info, file metadata records, byte offsets, and the actual file data stored sequentially. The developer used C++'s std::filesystem to recursively traverse nested directories and record each file's name, path, size, and offset. The project offered hands-on insight into binary parsing, metadata design, and low-level file structure concepts not typically encountered in everyday programming.

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