rdrprep tool

Version 00.02 December 2, 2002

Overview

This program prepares an ASCII file for submission to a Hercules virtual card reader. It reads the input file, and provides a mechanism to include either ASCII or EBCDIC files within. Files are included by specifying an 'include' statement (beginning in column 1) whose format is: ::C filename where:

• :: include escape characters
• C is one of E for raw EBCDIC or A for ASCII
• filename file you wish to include

For example:

Hello this is an ASCII file
::a /home/text.txt

Hello this is an EBCDIC file
::e /home/ebcdic.file

Would include both test.txt and ebcdic.file, translating all ASCII to EBCDIC.

Typically you would use this to submit jobs to a hercules reader for something like tk4- assuming the reader was in EBCDIC mode by specifying ebcdic instead of ascii on the reader line.

Here's an example from tk4-

• Original: 000C 3505 ${RDRPORT:=3505} sockdev ascii trunc eof
• Updated: 000C 3505 3505 sockdev ebcdic trunc eof

Some things to concider:

• The main input deck (i.e. the file you wish to convert) is assumed to be encoded in ASCII.
• The output deck will be in EBCDIC, fixed length (lrecl) records. Currently, the only supported lrecl is 80.
• Input lines longer than lrecl will be truncated, shorter lines padded out to lrecl length.
• ASCII input files are assumed to be of variable line length,
• EBCDIC input files are assumed to be of fixed (lrecl) length.

Install

Type make to build, then sudo make install to install to /usr/local/bin/rdrprep

To remove files, use sudo make clean

Sample Help from "rdrprep --help" execution

rdrprep
Copyright 2001-2002, James M. Morrison
Version: 0.3 
Built:   Tue Sep  8 19:18:10 2020

This program prepares an ASCII file for submission to a Hercules virtual
card reader.  It reads the input file, and provides a mechanism to include
other (ASCII or EBCDIC) files.  Files are included by specifying an 'include' 
statement (beginning in column 1) whose format is:
	::C [path]filename
where:
	:: 		are the include escape characters
	C 		either E (EBCDIC) or A (ASCII) for the included file's
			character set.  The case of E or A is not significant.
	[path]filename 	specifies the filename and optional path of the file
			to be included.

The main input file (specified on the command line) is assumed to be in
ASCII.  ASCII files are assumed to be of variable line lengths, EBCDIC
files are assumed to be of fixed length.  All input lines are translated
to EBCDIC (if necessary), and blank padded or truncated to 80 characters
(subject to the trunc option).  Include statements are only recognized 
in ASCII input files.


Syntax: rdrprep [options...] input [output]

 input     input filename
 output    output filename (default reader.jcl)

Options:
--help/-h		this help message
--version      prints version and build date
--verbose      be verbose
--debug        print debug information
--no-truncate  disable truncating after 80 records
--print        print output in ASCII
--lrecl/-l     custom record length (default 0)

                                                                    

Version history

Version	Date Released	Comments
00.00	02/07/2001	Base release
00.01	04/07/2001	Ignores zero length ASCII input records
00.02	12/02/2002	Incorporate Mike Rayborn's fix for long ASCII lines, as reported in the Yahoo turnkey-mvs group. Added trunc option; -trunc will wrap long ASCII lines (for example HTML files); similar to old behavior. Default is +trunc (truncate ASCII input at 80 bytes).
0.3	08/09/2020	Rewrote options parser, fixed pipe translation, added lrecl option, added newline if empty line found, added retooled debug/verbose.