Re: Read a fixed length of input each time

[SBP]

Hello

I know it has been a while since this issue was raised, but I would
like to post an answer in case someone having the same problem finds
this thread (as I did at some point).

In short, I have gone and developed the extension that Andy and Arnold
mentioned in their replies. It is called `binrecord' and it precisely
allows specifying the format of a fixed-width binary record, reading
each one at a time, splitting the fields and working with the values
(various conversion functions available).

Please refer to my post on the gawkextlib-users list, where it says how
to obtain the extension:
https://sourceforge.net/p/gawkextlib/mailman/message/59189598
Full documentation with examples is provided, so in principle it should
be easy to use.

Finally, regarding use cases, the extension is useful at least whenever
you would prefer working with numeric table data stored as a binary file
rather than a text file (e.g., when you have tens of millions of rows,
as in my case), for operations of filtering, splitting, extracting or
modifying data. In principle, however, you can work with any kind of
binary data file.

Cheers!
Sirio

P.S. I am posting this twice to address two related questions on the
list.