enhancement request for a long word byte swap option for 'dd'

[Mike Lockhart]

Dear Sir,

 

I am an application-support analyst who makes extensive use of 'awk'
scripts in my work.  One problem I have run into lately is an endian
issue.  My company has worked in the Unix world for many years, and
several years ago ported their applications to Linux.  To avoid endian
issues, all our output binary files are written big-endian.  Some of my
'awk' scripts use 'od' to access data words in these files.
Unfortunately (for me), on an Intel box running Linux, 'od' expects
little-endian words.  Not a problem if they're 1- or 2-byte words, as I
pipe a 'dd' with conv=swab into 'od' and all is cool.

 

For 4-byte words (floats, long integers), however, this doesn't work.  

 

How does one go about asking for an enhancement, say, for 'dd' -
conv=swab4 - that would allow this operation?

 

regards

 

Mike Lockhart

Tier 2 Analyst

713-839-3188

address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden> 

 

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