Creating a program that scans a specific document?

[whathaveidone]

What's up people?

Let me explain what is going on. I have a summative exam for my computer engineering class, this summative is pretty open ended and generally wants us to, well, engineer something that has somewhat of a purpose. I chose one of the sample ideas which was to create a program with the purpose of finding and identifying a virus. It sounded easy at the time I selected it despite having no background with programming whatsoever. I mean all what you had to do was code a program that can identify the code of a non-threatening virus that you create. I spent a lot of time writing an overview for how I'd be able to attempt to make a program like this, leaving actually creating it to the second half of the time allotted (With a bit of procrastination in there too). Now that I am on the tail end of the project I am pretty worried because I have no clue what program to use (Turing, Python, I don't know) or how to even do something as simple as ordering the program to search the selected file's code for the virus'.

I just thought to come here to ask you guys for any advice whatsoever, not to ask you to do my project for me. Basically I just need advice on things like what program would be the easiest to use for this purpose and directions on where to look for instructions on how to atleast attempt making something like this. I realize that it'd be a pretty easy thing to make if I had taking a course in programming and that it was very foolish of me to choose a project that would require me to utilize skills that I do not posess but any and all advice would be appreciated.

Peace and sorry for the long read/idiocracy.
TL;DR - Chose a project that involved making virus detection software with no background in coding and would like to know where I could go to learn how to create something like it, or if it is even possible for me to learn how to do so within 7 days.

[DemonWasp]

You have set yourself up for failure.

The task of identifying a "virus" (in this case, a block of data in another block of data) isn't very difficult. Actual virus detection is orders of magnitude harder (and still an essentially unsolved problem), but it looks like your assignment is a good deal simpler.

However, with zero programming experience you are so far up the proverbial creek that it's amazing.

If you're prepared to dedicate this entire coming week to learning a language (I would suggest Python, as it's pretty easy and there are a lot of good introductions/tutorials on the web) and how to program in that language, then you *might* be able to build something. If you have more specific details on the project's requirements then I can provide a more detailed answer.

You could start with http://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/ or, if you have basically zero experience with how computers work and how they are programmed, this: http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers .

Get a python interpreter installed. Write a simple "Hello World" program. Start learning about file I/O. Try to write a small program that will read a file and just output it to the screen (console).

Come back here if you need help, run into trouble, or need the next steps. Post your code in [ code ] code goes here [ / code ] blocks (without spacing out the [tags]).

And next time, spend 80+% of your time on implementation.

[Tony]

Seems like your best bet at salvaging the project is to detect any changes to files, such as Tripwire -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Tripwire