title: Opening .dat files in C
body: <p>I am a novice programmer and just had a question regarding the opening of .dat files in C.</p>
  
  <p>I received a .dat file from a friend, and these were the instructions on how to open it:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The first 4 bytes contain an integer
    number that indicates how many
    subsequent bytes you can throw away.
    The byte after that contains the ASCII
    code for a single letter in the
    message. The next 4 bytes contain the
    number of junk bytes that you can
    throw away, and then read the next
    letter, etc.  The last byte in the
    file will be the last letter in the
    message.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm really just looking for a way to view individual bytes of the file; at this point I'm fairly confused...</p>