carving.hpp

1. Overview

The carving.hpp file implements low-level carving primitives and signature-driven extraction from raw media.

This is an interface and data-contract file. It declares the public and internal types used by this subsystem, allowing implementation files and callers to share a stable compile-time contract.

Its paired source or interface file is carving.cpp.

Primary responsibilities:

  • Define carving signatures and scan windows
  • Locate candidate headers and footers
  • Validate candidate extents
  • Write carved objects with traceable metadata

2. File Identity and Scope

  • Source path: src/carving.hpp
  • Language: C++
  • File role: interface and data-contract file
  • Physical lines: 81
  • Non-empty lines: 72
  • SHA-256: 2c1b061f9ff5bd4fb9f25a589829153dd82dcc63e4f398095ff71761895c9782

Declared namespaces:

  • carving

3. Dependencies

3.1 Project Headers

  • models.hpp
  • filesystem_recovery.hpp
  • disk_reader.hpp

3.2 Standard and External Headers

  • cstdint
  • string
  • vector

These dependencies define the file’s compile-time integration with the recovery engine, GTK interface, on-disk format decoders, operating-system services, or C++ standard library.

4. Declared Types

  • struct CarvingOptions.

5. Constants and Configuration Values

No preprocessor or compile-time constants were detected as top-level declarations in this file.

6. Data Members and Persistent State

The interface declares the following state-bearing members:

  • uint64_t max_bytes_to_scan {16ull*1024*1024*1024}
  • uint64_t max_file_size {500ull*1024*1024}
  • bool skip_short_magic {false}

These members hold configuration, parser context, UI widgets, source references, progress state, recovered metadata, or temporary resources according to the owning type.

7. API and Function Inventory

The following callable interfaces or definitions were detected:

  • bool run_carving(DiskReader&reader,const std::string&output_dir,const CarvingOptions&opts,std::vector<RecoveredFileRecord>&recovered,std::vector<std::string>&logs,std::string&error) – Implements the operation identified by this API and updates or returns the associated state.

8. Operational Flow

The subsystem represented by this file normally participates in the following flow:

  1. Define carving signatures and scan windows.
  2. Locate candidate headers and footers.
  3. Validate candidate extents.
  4. Write carved objects with traceable metadata.
  5. Expose or execute the detected APIs: run_carving.
  6. Return explicit results, progress data, recovered records, or diagnostics to the calling layer.

9. Validation and Error Handling

  • Errors are propagated through Boolean results, error strings, logs, exceptions, or status records depending on the API.
  • Byte offsets, sizes and lengths must be validated before arithmetic and before every read to avoid overflow and out-of-bounds access.
  • On-disk structures are accepted only after validating signatures, magic values and structural constraints.
  • Input and output paths require existence checks, permission handling and safe destination construction.

10. Runtime, Concurrency, and Resource Management

  • Deterministic behavior: callers depend on explicit return values and stable data structures to distinguish successful recovery from partial or invalid results.
  • Temporary loop devices, mappings and mounts require deterministic reverse-order cleanup.

11. Security and Data-Recovery Considerations

  • Recovery code should prefer read-only source access and avoid writing to the original damaged medium.
  • Raw devices and image files are treated as untrusted binary input; every offset and length must remain bounded by the source size.
  • Recovered names and destination paths must be sanitized to prevent directory traversal and accidental overwrite outside the selected export directory.

12. Implementation Considerations

  • Changes to public declarations can affect every translation unit that includes this header and should preserve binary and source compatibility where required.
  • State-bearing members should have explicit ownership and initialization semantics, especially for references, pointers, file descriptors and GTK widgets.
  • Large-device arithmetic uses 64-bit values; additions and multiplications should be checked before use as offsets or allocation sizes.

13. Integration with the Recovery Pipeline

  • The file belongs to the extraction layer and consumes scan candidates or validated filesystem metadata.
  • Recovered output is represented through shared models and returned to the exporter or UI.
  • Partial recovery must be reported explicitly rather than silently treated as complete.

14. Licensing and Provenance

No explicit copyright or software-license statement was detected in the opening section of this individual file. Distribution terms should therefore be verified against the project-level license and repository metadata.

The SHA-256 value in this document can be used to associate the generated documentation with the exact source version analyzed.

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