reading in ascii files on a tape using tar?

[Eoin Woods]

lgdelta!email!tachost!BRL.MIL!Info-Unix-Request at tachost.af.mil (The Moderator) writes:

>I will be getting several dozen labelled and unlabelled ascii
>tapes (some created on vaxen, others on big blue).  What command
>whould I use to copy these files from tape to disk.

Take a look at the dd(1) command, a command like :

   $dd if=/dev/tape of=/users/fred/ibmfile conv=ibm

would read an IBM tape, converting the IBM EBCDIC to ASCII.
To swap byte ordering use the conv=swab option.

(The list of perms and combs for this command is huge!)

Eoin.
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