"dd conv=unblock cbs=80 "

Griff Smith ggs at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Wed Aug 3 10:00:59 AEST 1988


In article <48 at csnz.nz>, paul at csnz.UUCP writes:
> In article <10479 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> ggs at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) writes:
> >In article <736 at esl.UUCP>, mac at esl.UUCP writes:
> >...
> >>    dd if=/dev/rmt0 ibs=64k cbs=80 conv=unblock ...
> >> 	... isn't in any ATT man page.
> >> 
> >> 	/bin/dd never read the man page, and fully supports the undocumented
> >>    cbs and conv=unblock/block options.
> >> 
> >Not quite true.  I have a fine version of the manual page on my system
> >at AT&T.  It's the same one I sent to Summit a few years ago, along
> >with the SVr3 re-write of dd.  
> 
> So why not post the man page for dd already?  Some of us at the end of
> the UNIX pipe(line) would appreciate it - New Zealand isn't exactly
> geographically close to Murray Hill, and Olivetti (the vendor who sold
> us our 3B2) have several month's of hysteresis on such fixes....

Given that the on-line manual pages are a value-added product and not
part of the standard distribution (I'm not sure about this, but recent
netnews articles lead me to believe it), I suspect that the proprietary
police might frown on my posting the full man page (you should see the
propaganda we get around here).  The following is a brief summary of all
implemented features:

if=file		input file name; standard input is default
of=file		output file name; standard output is default
ibs=n		input block size (bytes, default 512)
obs=n		output block size (bytes, default 512)
bs=n		set both input and output block size, superseding ibs and obs
cbs=n		conversion buffer size (logical record length)
files=n		copy and concatenate input files
skip=n		skip n input records before starting copy
iseek=n		seek n records from beginning of input file before copying
		(fast skip for disk files)
oseek=n		seek n records from beginning of output file before copying
seek=n		identical to "oseek", retained for backward compatibility
count=n		copy only n input records
conv=ascii	convert EBCDIC to ASCII
conv=ebcdic	convert ASCII to EBCDIC
conv=ibm	slightly different map of ASCII to EBCDIC
conv=block	convert newline-terminated ASCII to blocked ASCII
conv=unblock	convert blocked ASCII to newline-terminated ASCII
conv=lcase	map alphabetics to lower case
conv=ucase	map alphabetics to upper case
conv=swab	swap every pair of bytes
conv=noerror	do not stop processing on an error (limit of 5 consecutive errors)
conv=sync	pad every input record to ibs

> Paul Gillingwater, Computer Sciences	Call this BBS - Magic Tower (24 hours)
> paul at csnz.nz  (vuwcomp!dsiramd!csnz)	NZ +64 4 753 561 8N1 TowerNet software
> P.O.Box 929, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND	V21/V23/V22/V22bis/Bell 103/Bell 212A
> Vox: +64 4 846194, Fax: +64 4 843924	"All things must parse"-ancient proverb

All the way to the antipodes and back in less than three days - not bad!
-- 
Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
Phone:		1-201-582-7736
UUCP:		{allegra|ihnp4}!ulysses!ggs
Internet:	ggs at ulysses.att.com



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