| # This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public |
| # License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this |
| # file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. |
| |
| =head1 NAME |
| |
| basecvt - radix conversion for arbitrary precision integers |
| |
| =head1 SYNOPSIS |
| |
| basecvt <ibase> <obase> [values] |
| |
| =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| |
| The B<basecvt> program is a command-line tool for converting integers |
| of arbitrary precision from one radix to another. The current version |
| supports radix values from 2 (binary) to 64, inclusive. The first two |
| command line arguments specify the input and output radix, in base 10. |
| Any further arguments are taken to be integers notated in the input |
| radix, and these are converted to the output radix. The output is |
| written, one integer per line, to standard output. |
| |
| When reading integers, only digits considered "valid" for the input |
| radix are considered. Processing of an integer terminates when an |
| invalid input digit is encountered. So, for example, if you set the |
| input radix to 10 and enter '10ACF', B<basecvt> would assume that you |
| had entered '10' and ignore the rest of the string. |
| |
| If no values are provided, no output is written, but the program |
| simply terminates with a zero exit status. Error diagnostics are |
| written to standard error in the event of out-of-range radix |
| specifications. Regardless of the actual values of the input and |
| output radix, the radix arguments are taken to be in base 10 (decimal) |
| notation. |
| |
| =head1 DIGITS |
| |
| For radices from 2-10, standard ASCII decimal digits 0-9 are used for |
| both input and output. For radices from 11-36, the ASCII letters A-Z |
| are also included, following the convention used in hexadecimal. In |
| this range, input is accepted in either upper or lower case, although |
| on output only lower-case letters are used. |
| |
| For radices from 37-62, the output includes both upper- and lower-case |
| ASCII letters, and case matters. In this range, case is distinguished |
| both for input and for output values. |
| |
| For radices 63 and 64, the characters '+' (plus) and '/' (forward |
| solidus) are also used. These are derived from the MIME base64 |
| encoding scheme. The overall encoding is not the same as base64, |
| because the ASCII digits are used for the bottom of the range, and the |
| letters are shifted upward; however, the output will consist of the |
| same character set. |
| |
| This input and output behaviour is inherited from the MPI library used |
| by B<basecvt>, and so is not configurable at runtime. |
| |
| =head1 SEE ALSO |
| |
| dec2hex(1), hex2dec(1) |
| |
| =head1 AUTHOR |
| |
| Michael J. Fromberger <sting@linguist.dartmouth.edu> |
| Thayer School of Engineering, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA |
