[ILUG] sed question

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:04:54 +0100
  | From: Ciaran Mac Lochlainn <ciaran17 at eircom.net>
  | 
  | First of all, I'm not sure if sed is even the right tool for this job, 
  | but here goes-

 I realize the problem has been solved.
 just one comment ...

  | I need to send a stream of output from a .net app on a windows box (or 
  | boxen) to a serial port on a Linux machine.  Each line has to contain a 
  | preamble which includes unprintable characters.  The .net app writes 
  | these in Unicode (e.g. \340 is written as \303\240) which the hardware 
  | device on the serial port can't interpret.

 “Unicode” is not an encoding (or charset) in modern
 usage; that is an _obsolete_ term for an _obsolete_
 16-bit encoding of the UCS (Universal Character Set).
 at first glance, what is meant here is UCS-16, the
 current de jour 16+ bit encoding of the UCS (and
 used by Windross in its LE (Little Endian) form).

 vim(1) can be set to read/write UTF-16 (as well as
 many other encodings) using the `set fileencoding=X'
 `:'-command:

    :set fileencoding=utf-16

 I actually composed this e-mail reply in UTF-16BE
 (Windross is UTF-16LE), using the above to set the
 encoding --- albeit I'll send it in UTF-8.

 anyways, since you could be dealing with UTF-16,
 this is another trick you might have been able to
 use .... albeit there are several gottchas here,
 such as UTF-16 nominally contains embedded nul (\0)
 bytes, which is liable to confuse many programs on
 *ix systems.

 _however_, looking at yer example (\340 is \303\240),
 I suspect you are really dealing with UTF-8.  (I have
 no idea what .NET specifies, if anything.)  if I have
 decoded it correctly in my head(!), \303\240 is the
 correct UTF-8 for U+00E0 (à, “LATIN SMALL LETTER A
 WITH GRAVE”).  I have no idea if that makes sense in
 context or not, or is just a coincidence?

 this probably confuses more than it helps --- sorry!
cheers,
	-blf-
-- 
«How many surrealists does it take to    |  Brian Foster      Montpellier,
 change a lightbulb?  Three.  One calms  |  blf at utvinternet.ie      FRANCE
 the warthog, and two fill the bathtub   |    Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
 with brightly-colored machine tools.»   |        http://www.stopesso.com