kka059@MIPL3.JPL.NASA.GOV (07/31/87)
After seeing a number of correspondents asking various questions about
how to read strangely formatted tapes (FOREIGN), I wanted to make
available a program that we have had on our system here at MIPL for
some time now which is useful for reading and making sense out of foreign
tapes.
If anyone is interested in obtaining the program, please contact me via
one of the connections below and I will be happy to send out the source
(written in FORTRAN) to the program TAPES. If I receive enough requests,
I will post the source to Info-Vax. (The source is roughly 100 blocks,
including all documentation.)
I have extracted a portion of the DCL help file below to describe some of
the features of TAPES:
This program operates in two modes:
In "Scan" mode, it scans a tape and prints out information about its
contents.
In "Copy" mode it copies all or part of the tape to a disk or second
tape. In this mode it can also perform translation between ascii and
ebcdic, or give a hex dump of the input.
Syntax: $ TAPES tape[/qual]
where "tape" is the drive on which the tape has been mounted (/FOREIGN)
and "qual" denotes one or more optional Qualifiers. If no qualifiers are
specified, the program operates in "scan" mode.
The program starts at the current position of the input tape, so repeated
executions can be performed to do combinations of operations that cannot
be specified by the parameters, e.g., copying two files with different
attributes.
QUALIFIERS
The following qualifiers may be specified after the tape-drive parameter
(square brackets [] denote optional elements, and embedded blanks are
legal):
/OUT[=x] - specifies the destination of output other than to terminal.
/COPY - requests "Copy" mode.
/DUMP - requests hex dump of the input.
/FILES [= n1[:m1] [,n2[:m2] [,...,n10[:m10]]]] - files to be copied.
/BLOCKS=n[:m] - blocks to be copied.
/BYTES=n - number of bytes to be copied from each block.
/ALL - output all bytes of each block.
/IGNORE - ignore read errors on input tape.
/SKIP - skip input records with read errors when copying.
/TOASC - perform EBCDIC-to-ASCII translation.
/029 - correct for 029 IBM keypunch characters.
/TOEBC - perform ASCII-to-EBCDIC translation.
/FIXED - specifies that output disk file is to be of record-type 'FIXED'.
/RECLEN=r - specifies record length of output file.
/REBLOCK=n - specified reblocking on output tape by factor n.
/AFTER[=n] - specifies position on output tape.
/REWIND - causes input tape to be rewound before any other processing.
/EOT - read data past the end of tape mark.
/SPLIT - split input file if end of output tape encountered during copy.
All qualifiers may be abbreviated down to 3 characters.
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+
| Kurt Andersen | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| MIPL Applications | Mail Stop 168-427 |
| Programmer | 4800 Oak Grove Drive |
| Office: 169-425 | Pasadena, Calif. 91109 |
+----------------------------+-------------------------+----------------+
| NETWORKS: | Eat, drink and |
| SPAN: Mipl3::KKA059 (5.153) | be merry... |
| ARPA Internet: KKA059@Mipl3.Jpl.Nasa.Gov | |
| Internet Address: [128.149.1.28] | |
| ARPAnet->SPAN: KKA059%Mipl3@Su-Star.Stanford.Edu | for tomorrow |
| or: KKA059%Mipl3.Span@Jpl-Vlsi.Arpa | the system |
| Ma Bell (R.I.P.): (818) 354-1672 | will prang. |
+------------------------------------------------------+----------------+
| Look it up... |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+UOWDJB@UOFMCC.BITNET (Dave Bell - ACADEMIC CONSULTANT, U. of Winnipeg) (08/05/87)
Kurt Anderson,
Could you please send me a copy of your foreign tape reader utility
that you outlined.
As I am in the process of removing my subscription from INFO-VAX (temporarily)
I may not see it if you post it. So could you please
send me a copy directly to my address. Many thanks.
-------------------------------------
David Bell
Academic Consultant
Computer Services
E-mail: UOWDJB@UOFMCC.BITNET
V-mail: 204/786-9494
S-mail: Computer Services,
The University of Winnipeg,
515 Portage Avenue,
Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada R3B 2E9
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