I was trying to load fixed-structure plist file by changing his text content ad adding a dictionary as root element.

plist_rootelement_fix.m

/**
 * I was trying to load fixed-structure plist files like this:
 * \code{.xml}
 * <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 * <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
 * <plist version="1.0">
 * <array>
 * 	<dict>
 * 		<key>id</key>
 * 		<string>ID-0</string>
 * 		<key>field-1</key>
 * 		<string>value 1</string>
 *		...
 * 	</dict>
 *	...
 * </array>
 * </plist>
 * \endcode
 * But what I need was a structure like this:
 * \code{.xml}
 * <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 * <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
 * <plist version="1.0">
 * <dict>
 * 	<key>rows</key>
 * 	<array>
 * 		<dict>
 * 			<key>id</key>
 * 			<string>ID-0</string>
 * 			<key>field-1</key>
 * 			<string>value 1</string>
 *			...
 * 		</dict>
 *		...
 * 	</array>
 * </dict>
 * </plist>
 * \endcode
 * Due to the big size of the plist file I wrote this buffered reader for ASCII-only text files
 * to overcome this problem.
 */

/*
	Setup variables
 */

NSString* filepath = @"input.plist";
NSString* outfilepath = @"output.plist";

/*
	Open the input text file
 */

FILE* fp = fopen([filepath UTF8String], "r");
if(!fp) {
	NSLog(@"Cannot load Plist file %@",filepath);
	return;
}

/*
	Open the output text file
 */

FILE* fpout = fopen([outfilepath UTF8String], "w");
if(!fpout) {
	NSLog(@"Cannot write temporary plist file %@",tempfilename);
	return;
}

/*
	Service variables
 */

const int buflen = 100;
char buf[buflen];
char* startidx;
char buf2[buflen+100];
int j;

while(!feof(fp)) {
	int rlen = fread(buf, buflen, sizeof(buf[0]), fp);
//	NSLog(@"len %d = %s",rlen,buf);
	if(rlen>0) {
		startidx = strstr(buf, "<array>");
		if( startidx!=NULL ) {
			char *i = buf;
			j = 0;
			while( i!=startidx ) {
				buf2[j++] = *i;
				i++;
			}
			buf2[j] = '\0';
			strcat(buf2,"<dict><key>rows</key>");
			strcat(buf2,startidx);
			fwrite(buf2, strlen(buf2), sizeof(buf2[0]), fpout);
		}
		else {
			startidx = strstr(buf, "</array>");
			if( startidx!=NULL ) {
				char *i = buf;
				j = 0;
				while( i!=startidx ) {
					buf2[j++] = *i;
					i++;
				}
				buf2[j] = '\0';
				strcat(buf2,"</array><dict><key>rows</key>");
				startidx+=strlen("</array>");
				strcat(buf2,startidx);
				fwrite(buf2, strlen(buf2), sizeof(buf2[0]), fpout);
			} else {
				fwrite(buf, buflen, sizeof(buf[0]), fpout);
			}
		}
	}
}

fflush(fpout);
fclose(fpout);
fclose(fp);