[ale] Looking for structured data viewer/editor

[Gregory C. Johnson]

Hello all, 
 
Ancillary to an attempt at recovering a truncated 
mailstore on an NTFS volume, I find myself really wanting a tool to examine and 
modify arbitrary structured data.  
 
I've run into this sort of thing with databases as 
well, so I'm hoping someone might have written a tool that can 
display/manipulate data based on some sort of schema file(s). 
 
I'm thinking something like a database/filesystem 
version of pbm(5). Any pointers?  

 
TIA, -Greg
 
My coding is (very) rusty, but a completely 
arbitrary example of the CLI level of this concept might be forcing a password 
reset, as prototyped below.  (Though grep/sed would do a much more 
conventional job)
 
Schema:
=========================
TEXT=iso-blah-blah
 
structure password
    assume meta
        
location=file://localhost/etc
        
name="passwd"
        assume 
delimiter
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  
field=":"
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  
record="^J","^M"Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â # 
Should this be "\n"?
        assume previous.previous
        login=$TEXT link 
password.shadow.user.name match exact
        password {
            encoding 
$TEXT
            magic 
"*" is replaced by password.shadow.user.password
            }
        id=$TEXT unsigned int

        group=$TEXT unsigned 
int
        name=$TEXT
        home=$TEXT path
        shell=$TEXT executable
end password
 
structure password.shadow
    assume meta {
        
location=password.meta.location
        
name="shadow"
        assume delimiter
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  
field=":"
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  
record="^J","^M"Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â # 
Should this be "\n"?

        }
        user.name=$TEXT link 
password.user.name match exact
        user.password=$TEXT encrypted 
crypt(3)
        assume user.password.date.change 
encoding $TEXT type date_t
            last
            allowed
            required
            warning
            disable
        assume nothing    
        
        user.password.date.frozen=$text type 
date_t
        reserved=unknown

end password.shadow
=========================
 
sh> bash --noprofile
sh> trans --shell read password
sh> set

password.meta.record=0
password.meta.location=<FONT 
face=Arial size=2>file://localhost/etc

password.meta.name=passwd
password.meta.delimiter.
password.meta.delimiter.field=:<FONT 
face=Arial size=2>
password.meta.delimiter.record=^J,^M
password.login=root
password.password=*
password.id=0
password.group=0
password.name=root

password.home=/root
password.shell=/bin/bash
password.shadow.meta.<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>location=file://localhost/etc
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>password.shadow.meta.name=shadow
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>password.shadow.meta.delimiter.field=:<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>
<FONT face=Arial 
size=2>password.shadow.meta.delimiter.record=^J,^M

password.shadow.user.name=root
password.shadow.user.password=*
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.last=12345
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.allowed=0
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.required=30
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.warning=7
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.disable=0
password.shadow.user.password.date.frozen=0
password.shadow.reserved=
sh> 
password.shadow.user.password.date.change.required=0

sh> trans --shell write password
Â