.TH ascii2binary 1 "July, 2010"
.SH NAME
ascii2binary \- Convert ASCII numbers to binary
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ascii2binary [flags]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I ascii2binary
reads input consisting of a sequence of ASCII textual representations of numbers,
separated by whitespace, and produces as output the binary equivalents.
The type (unsigned integer, signed integer, or floating point number) and size
of the binary output is selected by means of command line flags. The default is
unsigned character.
Input is checked both for format errors and to ensure that the number requested
can be represented in a number of the requested binary type and size.
.SH INPUT FORMAT
The input formats supported are exactly those supported by
.I strtod(3)
for floating point numbers, by
.I strtoll(3)
for signed integers, and by
.I strtoull(3)
for unsigned integers, except that, unlike
.I strtod(3)
floating point numbers may have thousands separators.
This means that by default integers may be decimal, octal, or hexadecimal, determined by
the usual conventions. The command line flag
.I -b
may be used to specify another base for integer conversions.
.SH COMMAND LINE FLAGS
.PP
Long options may not be available on some systems.

.IP "-b,--base <base>"
set base in range [2,36] for integer conversions. The base may be either an integer or:

(b)binary

(o)octal

(d)ecimal

(h)exadecimal.

.IP -h,--help
print help message
.IP "-L,locale <locale>"
Set the LC_NUMERIC facet of the locale to <locale>.
.IP -s,--sizes
print sizes of types on current machine and related information
.IP "-t,--type <type>"
set type and size of output

The following are the possible output types. Note that some types may not be
available on some machines.

d  double

f  float

sc signed char

ss signed short

si signed int

sl signed long

sq signed long long

uc unsigned char

us unsigned short

ui unsigned int

ul unsigned long

uq unsigned long long
.IP "-v,--version"
identify version
.IP "-X,--explain-exit-codes"
print a summary of the exit status codes.

.SH EXIT STATUS
.PP
The following values are returned on exit:

.IP "0 SUCCESS"
The input was successfully converted.

.IP "1 INFO"
The user requested information such as the version number or usage synopsis
and this has been provided.

.IP "2 SYSTEM ERROR"
An error resulted from a failure of the operating system such as
an i/o error or inability to allocate storage.

.IP "3 COMMAND LINE ERROR"
The program was called with invalid or inconsistent command line flags.

.IP "4 RANGE ERROR"
This means that the input may be well-formed but cannot be represented
as the required type. For example, if the input is the string 983 and
ascii2binary is requested to convert this into an unsigned byte, ascii2binary
will exit with a RANGE ERROR because 983 exceeds the maximum value representable in an
unsigned byte, which is 255.

.IP "5 INPUT ERROR"
This means that the input was ill-formed, that is that it could not
be interpreted as a number of the required type. For example, if the input
is 0x2A and a decimal value is called for,  an INPUT ERROR will be returned
since 0x2A is not a valid representation of a decimal integer.

.SH AUTHOR
Bill Poser (billposer@alum.mit.edu)
.SH LICENSE
GNU General Public License, version 3
.SH SEE ALSO
binary2ascii(1), strtod(3), strtoll(3), strtoull(3)