Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community

Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Non-ASCII char prevents conversion of manpage to plain text
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Non-ASCII char prevents conversion of manpage to plain text Post 302452420 by LessNux on Friday 10th of September 2010 09:54:27 AM
Old 09-10-2010
Question Non-ASCII char prevents conversion of manpage to plain text
Hello,

I would like to export manual pages to plain text files.

man CommandName | col -bx > CommandName.txt

The above statement works successfully on Mac OS X. However, it often fails on my old Linux. The problem occurs if the source file of the manpage contains an escape sequence for Non-ASCII character such as "\(co" for the copyright character (0xA9).

Whenever "col -bx" encounters an non-ASCII character (0x80 through 0xFF), it aborts any further process and displays the error message, "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character".

The man command on Mac OS X automatically converts non-ASCII characters into ASCII equivalents such as "(C)" for the copyright character. Therefore, col does not receive non-ASCII characters, and the job successfully completes.

On the other hand, the man command on my old Linux does not convert non-ASCII characters into ASCII equivalents. Therefore, col receives non-ASCII characters, and the job fails.

Please suggest me appropriate solutions for this problem.

Is it possible to force the man command on my old Linux to convert non-ASCII characters into ASCII equivalents? Or, is it possible to force the col command to accept non-ASCII characters?

Here are some examples of failed CommandNames with their non-ASCII characters that caused the failures.

find (curly quote, 0xB4)
hexdump (middle dot, 0xB7)
ln (copyright char, 0xA9)

Many thanks in advance.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

ASCII to char convertion

I am writing the script to encrypt and decrypt content of the text file. How can I convert ASCII to characters and backward? I need it for Bourne shell script. Thanks::confused: (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: woody
3 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

ascii conversion

after converting my ebcidic file to ascii i get the following output 2097152+0 records in 1797345+1 records out Why is there a difference in number of records. Is the converson chopping off any records. All i am doing is just a conversion using the following script dd if=xaa cbs=152 ... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: rintingtong
0 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

help needed with ASCII conversion

I have a file say "codefile" here ,contains data like this Hi! How are you? I need to covert this data into stram of equivalant ASCII values I wrote follwoing script. #!/bin/bash while read -n1 char do printf "%d" \'$char done < codefile this gives me output ... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: sunilmenhdiratt
4 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

need help with ascii to decimal conversion

Hi, Can anyone please help me ascci to decimal conversion in bash I have a file which contains stream of numbers like this,these are ascci values 729711810132973278105991013268971213233 I want to covert it to its actual value like upper code's decimal is "Have a Nice Day!" ... (15 Replies)
Discussion started by: sunilmenhdiratt
15 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Conversion from EBCDIC to ASCII

when i try to convert a mainframe EBCDIC file to ASCII ,i dont see correct file this is the source file ... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: venkatvelpula
3 Replies

6. Programming

error: invalid conversion from ‘const char*’ to ‘char*’

Compiling xpp (The X Printing Panel) on SL6 (RHEL6 essentially): xpp.cxx: In constructor ‘printFiles::printFiles(int, char**, int&)’: xpp.cxx:200: error: invalid conversion from ‘const char*’ to ‘char*’ The same error with all c++ constructors - gcc 4.4.4. If anyone can throw any light on... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: GSO
8 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

ASCII to UTF-8 conversion

I Am trying to change the file encoding from ASCII to UTF-8 using below command iconv -f ASCII -t UTF-8 <input_file> > <output_file> But the output_file is not actually in UTF-8 format. If I use the file command to check the file encoding it still says ASCII. While converting am not... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: Sriranga
5 Replies

8. Programming

Invalid conversion from char* to char

Pointers are seeming to get the best of me and I get that error in my program. Here is the code #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #define REPORTHEADING1 " Employee Pay Hours Gross Tax Net\n" #define REPORTHEADING2 " Name ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Plum
1 Replies

9. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

EBCDIC to ASCII conversion

Hi, I have a input file which is EBCIDIC and it has packed decimals. Can anyone help me to convert EBCIDIC file to ASCII(Need to convert even Packed decimal values also to normal format). Thanks swapna (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: swapna_1990
12 Replies

10. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

EBCDIC to ASCII conversion

Hi, We have a mainframe file which is in EBCDIC format.We dont have direct access to mainframe ,client has provided us the mainframe file.The mainframe file is containing pact data(COMP1 ,COMP2 etc) which are unreadble.Can anyone suggest me how to convert this kind of ebcdic file to ascii... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: swapna_1990
11 Replies

LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

toascii

TOASCII(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							TOASCII(3)

NAME

       toascii - convert character to ASCII

SYNOPSIS

       #include <ctype.h>

       int toascii(int c);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       toascii(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

       toascii() converts c to a 7-bit unsigned char value that fits into the ASCII character set, by clearing the high-order bits.

RETURN VALUE

       The value returned is that of the converted character.

CONFORMING TO

       SVr4, BSD, POSIX.1-2001.  POSIX.1-2008 marks toascii() as obsolete, noting that it cannot be use portably in a localized application.

BUGS

       Many people will be unhappy if you use this function.  This function will convert accented letters into random characters.

SEE ALSO

       isascii(3), tolower(3), toupper(3)

COLOPHON

       This  page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU
								    2009-03-15								TOASCII(3)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:30 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy