I am including a plist file in my iPhone app. It is in binary format (using plutil to convert from xml to binary). I want to run an MD5 checksum (or SHA-1) on it at runtime to confirm its contents are what is expected. Unfortunately, I always get a checksum that's different than what I originally included. After over an hour of assuming I was calculating the MD5 sum wrong, I decided to run a test and confirm that the bytes are indeed, the same. They aren't. The file size remains the same, but starting at byte 30, and on throughout the file (except for the last 32 bytes), the file contents are completely different. Does anyone know if property list files are signed or otherwise "compiled" to a different binary format before inclusion in an iPhone app? If so, can you provide any more details on the process?
Thanks in advance!