Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I am using following command to convert from ebcdic to ascii :-

dd if=input_file of=out_file conv=ascii

but, since input_ile itself is 10 GB big, out_file becomes around 2 to 3 times bigger... got space restrictions in the env..

I am stuck .. any help ..??

Finder255

I don't understand - if the conversion is successful and the output is larger than the input, what shall we help if you can't get more available space? I doubt any other tool will let you have a smaller output - else there could be something wrong if one tool brings another output than the other.
So with what do you need help please
Try getting more space, maybe temporary from your SAN guys or ask a coworker if he has sufficient space somewhere on one of his servers where you can convert your stuff.

Actually I tried the code for smaller files, and I found its getting big.
I have not yet tried it on big one. I dont know how long its gonna take

Moreso, is it possible to overwrite the same file ,I am taking input from . in
dd command..

to be more clear,
I first do
cat file | od -Ad -x
Now, after this I do cuts using dd command
Now, output of
cat file | od -Ad -x
actually becomes twice the size. I dont know if there is any alternative for above.
I am doing this to grep for some pattern from above hex output.

If you have an ebcdic file and you want to read it on unix do not use od.
od is meant to show you something else, not how to read ebcdic.

dd if=filea of=fileb conv=ascii should produce fileb with the same size as filea.
Anything else is wrong for a straight conversion of ebcdic to ascii.