hypercard data file types and start patterns needed

Question

I am trying to recover deleted HyperCard data files.

I need to know both file extentions and "start Patterns" in the files, so that we can recover the deleted HyperCard data files.

Answer 1

By "data files", do you mean "stack" document files?

File extensions were not relevant to HyperCard "stacks" on Macintosh systems before OSX.

The 4-character file type identifier STAK was used by the Mac OS to associate HyperCard files ("stacks") with the HyperCard application, consistent with the then method of association. (Accordingly, file extensions were not used for this purpose by Mac OS prior to OSX; the filename including extension had no impact on its association to an application).

Accordingly, the first characters in a HyperCard stack were a bunch of Mac-specific characters including the substring "STAK". (the rest of those Mac characters won't paste here).

Have you considered how you will recover both data fork and resource fork? This may involve different challenges depending on the filesystem you are using, or how the original files were stored until now, because modern filesystems do not store data forks and resource forks in the same way that HyperCard "stack" files (and other documents from that era) used to.

Are you running an old OS in an emulator for this recovery task? It may make it easier.

In case it helps, you can also often get the "stack script" by opening a HyperCard "stack" file in your texteditor of choice.