In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nntp.Perl.Org) writes: >Hi > >How do I check whether a file is in ebcdic or ascii format ?
It rather depends on what you mean by 'ASCII'. If you were referring to strict ASCII, the 8th bit would be clear and so, assuming you are talking about text files, you would look to see whether the 8th bit was used much, because most printable characters in EBCDIC have the 8th bit set. However, the picture is a bit muddied by the fact that there are character set extensions to ASCII that set the 8th bit. So the mere presence of a set 8th bit doesn't rule out ASCII. I suggest you do some tests on samples of the kinds of files you'll be dealing with and print out the percentage of characters they contain that has the 8th bit set, and look at the ASCII vs EBCDIC ones. Hopefully a clear pattern will emerge. -- Peter Scott http://www.perldebugged.com/ *** NEW *** http//www.perlmedic.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
