Reassembling fragmented files or documents in a fragment order-independent manner

Abstract

Files can be reassembled from fragments by (a) accepting adjacency scores for each pair of fragments from a set of fragments, (b) identifying header fragments from the set of fragments, and (c) for each of the header fragments, (i) setting a current fragment to the identified header fragment, (ii) selecting, from any of the fragments not identified as a header fragment, a fragment with a best adjacency score with the current fragment, (iii) determining if the selected fragment has a better adjacency score with any of the other fragments not identified as a header than with the current fragment, (iv) if so, then (A) selecting another fragment, from any of the fragments not identified as a header fragment, a fragment with a next best adjacency score with the current fragment, and continuing, and otherwise (A) adding the selected fragment to a reassembly path started with the identified header fragment, and (B) setting the current fragment to the selected fragment, and continuing until the file is reconstructed.