LIT TEXT UTILITY MANUAL Version 2.0, 11/19/86 Copyright (C) 1986 Donald J. Irving Lit is a command line invoked text utility which filters a text file to stdout printing printable characters as they are, and showing all non-printable characters in any one or more of three representation formats. The only character interpreted (acted upon) by lit is the line feed character which causes lit to issue a line feed. The inspiration for lit came from the "l" command in many of the UNIX line editors. Lit is not quite the same as any of these, however. For one thing, lit output is never ambiguous. Here is an example of what lit does: Say the file 'myfile' consists of the following ascii characters: HT, HT, h, e, l, l, o, space, w, o, r, l, d, BEL, LF Saying 'lit myfile' would produce the following output: \t\thello world\007\n And saying 'lit myfile [various options]' might produce any of: \t\thello world^G\n ^I^Ihello world^G^J \011\011hello world\007\012 \09\09hello world\07\0A \009\009hello world\007\010 You control the output with optional command line arguments which provide: 1. The name of the file to read as input. 2. What subset of the file lines to print. 3. In which format(s) to represent non-printable characters. 4. Which number base to use for numeric representations. If you do not supply these, they default (in the original version) to: 1. Stdin. 2. The whole file. 3. Backslash constructs if possible else numeric representations. 4. Octal. Here is the command line template. The arguments may be specified in any order. The -bcanohd options may be stacked after one minus sign, or they may appear as separate arguments. lit [] [-s] [-p] [-[bcan][ohd]] THE NAME OF THE INPUT FILE The first command line argument encountered which does not start with a minus sign is considered to be the input file name. Any subsequent command line argument which does not start with a minus sign is considered to be an error. If no command line argument is found which does not start with a minus sign lit uses for input. PRINTING A SUBSET OF LINES OF THE FILE Lit prints the whole file by default. You can tell it on which line in the file to start printing and/or how many lines to print by supplying either of both of these command line arguments: -s lit will start printing at line -p lit will print lines There is no space between the 's' or 'p' and the number. There is no validity checking on the number values. FORMATS FOR REPRESENTING NON-PRINTABLE CHARACTERS There are three formats in which non-printable characters may be represented: C Language style backslash representations such as \n, control character representations such as ^J, and numeric value representations such as \012. C Language Backslash Representations The form is a backslash followed by a lower case letter. Here is the list of the applicable characters: line feed \n horizontal tab \t backspace \b carriage return \r form feed \f The ascii NUL character representation \0 is omitted. NUL is represented by its control character representation or as a numeric value. Control Character Representations The form is a caret followed by another symbol, where the second symbol is the keyboard control character of the character to be represented. For example, the ascii line feed character is represented as ^J. The ascii character DEL has an arbitrarily assigned representation of ^?. ASCII Numeric Value Representations The representation is in the form \num where num is the character's numeric value. (the unsigned integer value of its eight bits) displayed in any of the three number bases octal, decimal, or hexadecimal. For octal representations, num is exactly three octal digits; for hex representations, num is exactly two hexadecimal digits; and for decimal representations, num is exactly three decimal digits. Num is zero-padded on the left if necessary to make up the required number of digits. For example, the ESC char is represented as \033, \027, or \1B in octal, decimal, and hex respectively. NUL would be \000, \000, or \00. This format is not limited to ascii characters; any eight bits can be represented. Numbers of \200 (octal), \128 (decimal), \80 (hex), or greater are byte values beyond the upper end of the ascii character set. The largest byte value (all bits on) is \377 (octal), \255 (decimal), or \FF (hex). COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS FOR SELECTING REPRESENTATION FORMATS You tell lit which representation format or combination of formats to use for non-printable characters by supplying one of the command line arguments -b, -c, -a, or -n. If you supply none of these, then -b is selected by default. If you supply more than one, then the latter supersedes the former. -b use backslash representations such as \n if possible, else use numeric representations. -c use control char representations such as ^J if possible, else use numeric representations. -a all; use backslash reps if possible, else use control char reps if possible, else use numeric representations. -n use numeric representations only. You tell lit which number base to use for numeric representations by providing one of the command line arguments -o, -h, or -d. If you supply none of these, then -o is selected by default. If you supply more than one, then the latter supersedes the former. -o octal -h hexadecimal -d decimal EXCEPTIONAL CHARACTERS Two characters have special meaning in lit output. The backslash character \ always has special meaning. The caret character ^ has special meaning whenever control character representations are enabled. The Backslash Character \ As already described, the \ character in lit output signals the beginning of either a special letter representation such as \n or a numeric representation such as \012. The \ is also used to relieve a subsequent \ or ^ of its special meaning. \\ represents the actual character \, and (when control character representations are enabled) \^ represents the actual character ^. The Caret Character ^ When control character representations are enabled, a ^ signals the beginning of a control character representation such as ^J. Note the implication therefore that ^^ means Control caret (ascii RS), and ^\ means Control backslash (ascii FS). In both of these cases the second character is relieved of its special meaning because it is part of the control character representation. If control character representations are not enabled, then ^ is just another printable character. CONCLUSION Lit fills the gap between text editors which usually interpret special characters in special ways, and hex dump utilities which make terrible reading for text files. One of lit's greatest strengths is that it interprets nothing but the linefeed character; everything else is just represented to the output stream. Although lit provides a variety of output formats, perhaps its main usefulness is in quickly locating U.F.O.s (Unidentified File Objects) that have gotten into your text files. (like that ESC char that's wierding out your printer) For this purpose, the default options are adequate, and, for C programmers at least, already familiar. Donald J. Irving 9812 Gardenwood Way Sacramento, CA 95827 (916) 366-3225 CIS: 73547,1335 PLINK: ops158 Post scripts: ** One convenient way of getting to know lit is to use the default input file stdin. Just say 'lit [-options]' with no file name. Now you can type in lines one at a time and have lit filter them back to you. Try typing control characters to see how they come back. Keep in mind that in this configuration, the CLI is still trapping and interpreting (acting upon) what you type, so screen control characters like form feed, and tab, for example, actually cause form feeds and tabs to occur on the screen before lit has a chance to send you its output. This may make the screen look a little messy, but at least if the CLI is interpreting everything it can tell when you type Control C to break out. ** Want to have lit give you a Usage statement? Say 'lit lskdmlsdm' where lskdmlsdm is any string of garbage which doesn't add up to the name of a real file. ** Why not use \0 to represent NUL? Consider the following character sequence: BEL, space, NUL, 0, 7 Using \0 for NUL would yield the output '\007 \007'. To avoid this ambiguity, the \0 construct is not included in the backslash representations. ** Why use ^? for DEL? Keyboard control characters are always 64 places higher in the ascii table than the non-printable characters they represent. DEL is at the high end of the ascii character set, however, so there's no keyboard character to represent it. We need to arbitrarily choose some character. The ? seems to make at least some sense as a choice; it is 64 places less than DEL, and that kind of satisfies ones desire for symmetry in the world. (Besides, some of the UNIX world tools already do it that way.) ** If you don't like the default option settings, they are very simple to change in the C source. If you don't have a C compiler, and can't live with the settings, I will be willing to recompile it with your desired option settings. Send me a disk in a protective mailer and include return postage. I will return your disk in the same mailer.