ascii2binary(1)ascii2binary(1)NAMEascii2binary - Convert ASCII numbers to binary
SYNOPSISascii2binary [flags]
DESCRIPTIONascii2binary reads input consisting of a sequence of ASCII textual rep‐
resentations of numbers, separated by whitespace, and produces as out‐
put the binary equivalents. The type (unsigned integer, signed inte‐
ger, or floating point number) and size of the binary output is
selected by means of command line flags. The default is unsigned char‐
acter. 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.
INPUT FORMAT
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) float‐
ing 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.
COMMAND LINE FLAGS
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.
EXIT STATUS
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 rep‐
resented 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 exam‐
ple, if the input is 0x2A and a decimal value is called for, an
INPUT ERROR will be returned since 0x2A is not a valid represen‐
tation of a decimal integer.
AUTHOR
Bill Poser (billposer@alum.mit.edu)
LICENSE
GNU General Public License, version 3
SEE ALSObinary2ascii(1), strtod(3), strtoll(3), strtoull(3)
July, 2010 ascii2binary(1)
