Path: brl-tgr!seismo!cmcl2!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!mackay From: mackay@uw-june (Pierre MacKay) Newsgroups: net.sources Subject: ansitar, read and write ANSI labeled tapes Date: Sat, 19-May-84 13:13:23 EDT Organization: U. Washington, Computer Sci Ansitar reads from or writes to a magnetic tape in ANSI labeled tape format, which is a useful format for exchange of ASCII character files with a non-UNIX system. Eight-bit binary is also possible, using F-type blocking, but the results are likely to be unsatisfactory in most cases. This program was forwarded to me in answer to a desperate request, and has already proved very useful. It appeared on net.sources earlier with ANSI System level 1 capacities, and has now acquired System level 3 capacities (i. e. everything but spanned records). Spanned records would not be very difficult, but they do not seem to be very much in demand either. It reads and writes HDR2 labels as well as HDR1 labels, and is thus capable of deblocking tapes without explicit declaration of block or record sizes. A large number of the more interesting features are still marked off as VARIAN code because that is the way I received the program. The VARIAN code is basic to efficient operation, unlike the PIP code, which is for a rather special environment. I have not bothered to provide a makefile, since there is only one program here. ansitar.1 belongs ideally in /usr/man/man1 and the executable program anywhere in a generally used path. mackay@washington.ARPA (Computer Science, Univ of Washington)