ascii2binary - Convert ASCII numbers to binary
ascii2binary [flags]
ascii2binary reads input consisting of a sequence of ASCII textual
representations of numbers, separated by whitespace, and produces as output
the binary equivalents. The type (unsigned integer, signed integer, or
floating point number) and size of the binary output is selected by means of
command line flags. The default is unsigned character. Input is checked both
for format errors and to ensure that the number requested can be represented
in a number of the requested binary type and size.
The input formats supported are exactly those supported by
strtod(3) for
floating point numbers, by
strtoll(3) for signed integers, and by
strtoull(3) for unsigned integers, except that, unlike
strtod(3)
floating point numbers may have thousands separators. This means that by
default integers may be decimal, octal, or hexadecimal, determined by the
usual conventions. The command line flag
-b may be used to specify
another base for integer conversions.
Long options may not be available on some systems.
- -b,--base <base>
- set base in range [2,36] for integer conversions. The base
may be either an integer or:
(b)binary
(o)octal
(d)ecimal
(h)exadecimal.
- -h,--help
- print help message
- -L,locale <locale>
- Set the LC_NUMERIC facet of the locale to
<locale>.
- -s,--sizes
- print sizes of types on current machine and related
information
- -t,--type <type>
- set type and size of output
The following are the possible output types. Note that some types may not be
available on some machines.
d double
f float
sc signed char
ss signed short
si signed int
sl signed long
sq signed long long
uc unsigned char
us unsigned short
ui unsigned int
ul unsigned long
uq unsigned long long
- -v,--version
- identify version
- -X,--explain-exit-codes
- print a summary of the exit status codes.
The following values are returned on exit:
- 0 SUCCESS
- The input was successfully converted.
- 1 INFO
- The user requested information such as the version number
or usage synopsis and this has been provided.
- 2 SYSTEM ERROR
- An error resulted from a failure of the operating system
such as an i/o error or inability to allocate storage.
- 3 COMMAND LINE ERROR
- The program was called with invalid or inconsistent command
line flags.
- 4 RANGE ERROR
- This means that the input may be well-formed but cannot be
represented as the required type. For example, if the input is the string
983 and ascii2binary is requested to convert this into an unsigned byte,
ascii2binary will exit with a RANGE ERROR because 983 exceeds the maximum
value representable in an unsigned byte, which is 255.
- 5 INPUT ERROR
- This means that the input was ill-formed, that is that it
could not be interpreted as a number of the required type. For example, if
the input is 0x2A and a decimal value is called for, an INPUT ERROR will
be returned since 0x2A is not a valid representation of a decimal integer.
Bill Poser (
[email protected])
GNU General Public License, version 3
binary2ascii(1),
strtod(3),
strtoll(3),
strtoull(3)