From a2a202da7c34e60a9ba2a2b9c0746f5fbc4ab60e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Christian Hattemer <christian.hattemer@lst.at>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2025 10:47:48 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix reading Memos written by Lotus Approach

Lotus Approach uses dBase IV files, but the DBT files it produces use a
different header and a different storage method. In this case there's no
separation character but the length of the data is exactly the length
given in the header minus the length of the header itself.

To avoid 8 extra, usually zero, bytes at the end of each memo when
reading this database we now check the reserved field in the header and
use the alternate handling for this version and the original one for all
other versions.
---
 dbfread/memo.py | 18 ++++++++++++------
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/dbfread/memo.py b/dbfread/memo.py
index 024a5c1..2f286de 100644
--- a/dbfread/memo.py
+++ b/dbfread/memo.py
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
 DB4MemoHeader = StructParser(
     'DBase4MemoHeader',
     '<LL',
-    ['reserved',  # Always 0xff 0xff 0x08 0x08.
+    ['reserved',
      'length'])
 
 
@@ -160,11 +160,17 @@ def __getitem__(self, index):
 
         self._seek(index * block_size)
         memo_header = DB4MemoHeader.read(self.file)
-        data = self._read(memo_header.length)
-        # Todo: fields are terminated in different ways.
-        # \x1a is one of them
-        # \x1f seems to be another (dbase_8b.dbt)
-        return data.split(b'\x1f', 1)[0]
+
+        # 0xff 0xff 0x08 0x00
+        if memo_header.reserved == 0x0008FFFF:
+            return self._read(memo_header.length - DB4MemoHeader.size)
+        else:
+            # memo_header.reserved is usually 0xff 0xff 0x08 0x08.
+            data = self._read(memo_header.length)
+            # Todo: fields are terminated in different ways.
+            # \x1a is one of them
+            # \x1f seems to be another (dbase_8b.dbt)
+            return data.split(b'\x1f', 1)[0]
 
 
 def find_memofile(dbf_filename):