Re: What is the opposite of 'printf'?

[Matthew Woehlke]

Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> (Sorry this isn't exactly the right list, but this feels like a problem 
> coreutils should solve, and I don't see gmane carrying anything better.)
>
> I am looking for a way to convert binary data to a format that 'printf' 
> will understand (and more importantly, from which '<something> | sed 
> 's/\\/\\\\/g' | xargs printf' will produce the same output as the 
> input). Am I missing such a utility, or might this be an opportunity for 
> me to write 'unprintf' for coreutils? ('od -An -c' gets close, but still 
> needs some complex parsing if it is to round-trip.)
>
> The objective is to be able to reproduce a binary file from an 'editor 
> friendly' shell script. I know base64 could do this, except that base64 
> is not portable (even to pre-6.x GNU coreutils), whereas printf is IIRC 
> required by POSIX.

Thanks Eric and Bob for the replies. Unfortunately, as stated, the 
problem is that I am looking to generate an editor-friendly script (i.e. 
makeself is out) that can be run on arbitrary platforms (i.e. codegroup 
is out). And apparently uudecode is also out; my computer has man pages 
for it but no programs(?!). Conversely, I can't say I've run into a 
system yet that lacks printf.

So my original question remains... would anyone be interested in 
considering 'unprintf' for inclusion in coreutils? (Note: I /am/ 
volunteering to write and maintain it.)

--
Matthew
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