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To: "Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson" <johann@myrkraverk.com>
Cc: ZSH Users <zsh-users@sunsite.dk>
Subject: Re: Are there "binary" variables?
References: <m3irnjccn4.fsf@jin.myrkraverk.com>
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From: Philippe Troin <phil@fifi.org>
Date: 02 Jun 2006 19:39:09 -0700
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"Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson" <johann@myrkraverk.com> writes:

> Is there a way to work with binary data in zsh?  That is, more
> specifically, is there a way to compare ^E to 5 and get true?  Or
> convert a character (say, ^E again) to its integer representation?

Zsh's parameters are 8-bits clean.

You could do the above with:

typeset -A asc
for i in {0..255}; do asc[$(print "\\$(([##8]$i))")]=$i;done
var=$'\0\1\2\3'
for i in $#var; do print "$i: $asc[$var[$i]]"; done

Phil.