exexedat(3)

💖 exexedat — bestie's guide to gluing datafiles onto your executable 💖

okay so this is the Allegro manual page for exexedat, and it's part of the Allegro game programming library. it's giving "how do I get my data inside my binary" energy and honestly? iconic.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <allegro.h>

also, meet the star of the show: the Example exexedat. that's the whole synopsis. slay.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so this program is literally a demo showing you how to reach into an Allegro datafile — the kind the grabber utility makes — and access its contents after it's been linked to your executable by the exedat tool. 🫶

and like, it's basically the exdata example with some minor modifications. lowkey a remix. 💅

now, you're probably sitting there like, "bestie… how do I even compile, append, and exec my program??" 😭

and the answer is… like this:

1. Compile your program like normal. Use the magic filenames with # to load your data where needed. ✨
2. Once you compressed your program, run exedat foo.exe data.dat
3. Finally run your program. and that's it, that's the whole ritual. 👑

⚠️ real talk though: appending data to the end of binaries may not be portable across all platforms supported by Allegro. so don't just assume it works everywhere, fr fr. 💀

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• DATAFILE(3)
• END_OF_MAIN(3)
• allegro_error(3)
• allegro_init(3)
• allegro_message(3)
• blit(3)
• font(3)
• install_keyboard(3)
• line(3)
• load_datafile(3)
• makecol(3)
• readkey(3)
• screen(3)
• set_color_conversion(3)
• set_gfx_mode(3)
• set_palette(3)
• textout_ex(3)
• unload_datafile(3)

and that's the page!! 🎀 this lil beauty lives in the Allegro manual, version 4.4.3, dated alongside the exexedat(3) entry. mwah, go forth and append your datafiles bestie 💜🌈