How would one convert a file into binary?

MasterC · 01-19-2003, 10:55 AM

Hi, figure this isn't really linux specific, so I tossed it over here.

How would someone convert their file into a binary file as shown here:
http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/samba/

Click the link for "binary".

Anyone?

Edward78 · 01-19-2003, 12:38 PM

You can't convert a text file into binary. Why would you want to? You should link that to a linux howto page.

MasterC · 01-19-2003, 12:44 PM

Just for fun, just to be THAT geeky

And most of all, to show off even more of the talents of linux.

I'll poke around and see what I can find

Cool

MasterC · 01-19-2003, 12:47 PM

I've just fired an email off to David Lechnyr who's name and email address are at the top of this page.

I will let you all know if I get a response, and if so, how to do it

Cool

MasterC · 01-19-2003, 10:47 PM

Proof that linux people are so nice, and ROCK! Here's the reply I recieved TODAY from David (thanks for the very prompt reply!):

Quote:

Hi Chad,

I converted the text-only version to hex using hexdump(1), and then used
sed(1) to replace the characters...

9 = 00001001
a = 00001010
b = 00001011

etc...

Although I have no plans to update it each time the main document is updated
in the future ;-) Ironically, we're so far removed from the early days of
computing that there's no direct ascii to binary translation program (at
least, not one that can process large documents that I'm aware of).

So, yes it's real, but no, it's not practical. It just seemed fitting, as
so many of these howto docs use 8 million different formats to present
themselves in, which I find to be just silly. So in a sense, it's more of a
statement of irony than anything ;-)

Cheers,
- David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad" <masterc@masterc.no-ip.org>
To: <david@lechnyr.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 10:46 AM
Subject: Question on file conversion

> Hi

How did you get the Unofficial Samba HOWTO converted to Binary?
> http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/samba/binary.txt
>
> Is there a tool to use, or is it just a joke

>
> Thanks
>
>

Cool eh?

Cool

Grim Reaper · 01-20-2003, 07:58 PM

that samba document is bloody MAD!

imagine if somebody could just read that like plain english!

too bad there isn't something that will convert the entire document by just hitting go

I'll have to try what he did...hopefully i can get it to go

MasterC · 01-20-2003, 08:05 PM

He returned my Thank You email and included our email exchange on the homepage now!

Woohoo, I'm in linuxland now!

Binary versions, he he he, that's cool.

Cool

qanopus · 01-21-2003, 08:10 AM

Sorry for being dumb again, but that if you would take every acsii character in that file, and convert is to a "real" 0 or 1. So in psudo code :

FILE *outfile; // the output file
FILE *infile;
char text[10000];

outfile = fopen("path/to/outfile","w+");
infile = fopen("path/to/infile","r");

/*some code to dump the content
of the ascii file (infile) to a buffer
called "text" comes here
.......
.......
*/

do
{
fprinf(outfile,*text-48); // a zero is an ascii 48, I thought
text++;

}while(text);

fclose(infile);
fclose(outfile);

The above code wil ofcource not work, you I hope you get the picture.

oulevon · 01-21-2003, 10:50 PM

Somebody in the programming forum was doing this in java, although he was working on Strings, not Files. He takes each char and converts it's ascii value into binary. There's a big difference though. In java, a char is 2 bytes, while in most other languages its only 1 byte. It is strange how there isn't more support for binary while almost every programming language includes operators for bit manipulation.