>> Exactly the other way round ... ~> echo abcd | od -tx1 0000000 61 62 63 64 0a 0000005
is nice; and, for some purposes ~> echo abcd | od -An -tx1 61 62 63 64 0a (or "od -An -tx1 <filename>") is nicer still. ("od -x .." outputs the strange transposition of bytes that you have referred to.) Fergus -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/