NAME

       ascii2binary - Convert ASCII numbers to binary

SYNOPSIS

       ascii2binary [flags]

DESCRIPTION

       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.

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) 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.

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 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.

AUTHOR

       Bill Poser (billposer@alum.mit.edu)

LICENSE

       GNU General Public License, version 3

SEE ALSO

       binary2ascii(1), strtod(3), strtoll(3), strtoull(3)

                                            July, 2010                            ascii2binary(1)