basecvt.pod (2656B)
1 # This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public 2 # License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this 3 # file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. 4 5 =head1 NAME 6 7 basecvt - radix conversion for arbitrary precision integers 8 9 =head1 SYNOPSIS 10 11 basecvt <ibase> <obase> [values] 12 13 =head1 DESCRIPTION 14 15 The B<basecvt> program is a command-line tool for converting integers 16 of arbitrary precision from one radix to another. The current version 17 supports radix values from 2 (binary) to 64, inclusive. The first two 18 command line arguments specify the input and output radix, in base 10. 19 Any further arguments are taken to be integers notated in the input 20 radix, and these are converted to the output radix. The output is 21 written, one integer per line, to standard output. 22 23 When reading integers, only digits considered "valid" for the input 24 radix are considered. Processing of an integer terminates when an 25 invalid input digit is encountered. So, for example, if you set the 26 input radix to 10 and enter '10ACF', B<basecvt> would assume that you 27 had entered '10' and ignore the rest of the string. 28 29 If no values are provided, no output is written, but the program 30 simply terminates with a zero exit status. Error diagnostics are 31 written to standard error in the event of out-of-range radix 32 specifications. Regardless of the actual values of the input and 33 output radix, the radix arguments are taken to be in base 10 (decimal) 34 notation. 35 36 =head1 DIGITS 37 38 For radices from 2-10, standard ASCII decimal digits 0-9 are used for 39 both input and output. For radices from 11-36, the ASCII letters A-Z 40 are also included, following the convention used in hexadecimal. In 41 this range, input is accepted in either upper or lower case, although 42 on output only lower-case letters are used. 43 44 For radices from 37-62, the output includes both upper- and lower-case 45 ASCII letters, and case matters. In this range, case is distinguished 46 both for input and for output values. 47 48 For radices 63 and 64, the characters '+' (plus) and '/' (forward 49 solidus) are also used. These are derived from the MIME base64 50 encoding scheme. The overall encoding is not the same as base64, 51 because the ASCII digits are used for the bottom of the range, and the 52 letters are shifted upward; however, the output will consist of the 53 same character set. 54 55 This input and output behaviour is inherited from the MPI library used 56 by B<basecvt>, and so is not configurable at runtime. 57 58 =head1 SEE ALSO 59 60 dec2hex(1), hex2dec(1) 61 62 =head1 AUTHOR 63 64 Michael J. Fromberger <sting@linguist.dartmouth.edu> 65 Thayer School of Engineering, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA