Newbie lost(new info)

[John Roth]

If you could read it with SAS, most likely the floats are in
IBM's proprietary format, not in standard IEEE-488 (or whatever)
format. (IBM, by the way, was there first...) I'm not certain whether
Python can convert them. You might have to do some bit twiddling,
which is going to be awfully slow.

For the rest of it, I'd like to see a *real* hex dump in mainframe
format. From what you've given us so far I'm not certain whether
the struct module can convert the data for you.

John Roth



"Angelo Secchi" <secchi at sssup.it> wrote in message
news:mailman.132.1077738332.8594.python-list at python.org...
>
> I checked with a statistical software(SAS) and I was able to convert my
> file using as a format something called s370frb4. that according to its
> manual should correspond to a float in C and to a REAL*4 in fortran. Now
> I know that the first 3 numbers in the binary part should be exactly:
>
>
> 15612852 0 0
>
> I also notice using struct module that
>
> >>> struct.pack('i',15612852)
>     '\xb4;\xee\x00'
>
> >>> struct.pack('i',0 )
>     '\x00\x00\x00\x00'
>
>
> not very different (just the order and the F around) from the beginning
> of the binary part of my file
>
> 13510010222010341341F\xee;\xb4\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00F]\xe3\x9
> a\x00
>
>
> Can these infos help anybody to help me?
> Thanks again hoping to be able to throe away any proprietary sofware...
> Angelo
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:49:27 +0100
> anton at vredegoor.doge.nl (Anton Vredegoor) wrote:
>
> > Angelo Secchi <secchi at sssup.it> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >I'm fighting with a binary file and I am definitely lost.
> > >I know that each line of the file has a first part that is a string
> > >with length 113 and then that there is a group of identical fields. I
> > >do not know the precise format of these fields even if I know that
> > >the file was created on an IBM Mainframe and that in the binary part
> > >there should be 223 fields with the same width 4.
> > >Just to give you an idea if I read the first line of my file  as a
> > >string I obtain something like (just a small part of the first line):
> > >
> > >13510010222010341341F\xee;\xb4\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00F]\xe3
> > >\x9 a\x00
> > >
> > >
> > >Still I am not able to convert this binary. Can anybody give some
> > >advices?
> >
> > The string above contains escape sequences, so sometimes four
> > characters correspond to one byte, sometimes a char is just a byte.
> > This is not really present in the file but just an artifact of the way
> > you chose to print it. In order to gain more insight:
> >
> > #open the file in binary mode e.g:
> > inf = file('somefile','rb')
> >
> > #read 1 line e.g:
> > line = inf.readline()
> >
> > #turn this line into a list of characters:
> > L = list(line)
> >
> > #Inspect the list L and come back here with further questions,
> > #if you have any :-)
> > print L
> >
> > Anton
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -- 
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>
> --
> ========================================================
>  Angelo Secchi                     PGP Key ID:EA280337
> ========================================================
>   Current Position:
>   Graduate Fellow Scuola Superiore S.Anna
>   Piazza Martiri della Liberta' 33, Pisa, 56127 Italy
>   ph.: +39 050 883365
>   email: secchi at sssup.it www.sssup.it/~secchi/
> ========================================================
>