Binary files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,Is there anyway I can conver the binary file to ascii. I don't know the binary file format. file command just lists this as "data" file and when I view it has a lot of non-printable characters.Can I write any command equivalent to wc -l to find out the number of rows in the file?Can I use dd? This is solaris I am talking about.cheers.

2

"strings" will show you the printable contents of a binary file - depending on what it is you want to find out..

3

Thanks for this. This binary file contain all the accepted records in our application. I just want to find out how many records are accepted. Basically "wc -l {file}"

4 
I don't know the binary file format

Unix Shell commmands like "wc" expect a unix text file format with each line terminated by a linefeed character.

This task is impossible with the information supplied.

Have you considered reading the file back with whatever programming language was used to create the file and taking into account whatever file structure was used originally?

5

Thanks. I think makes sense. I need to go back to basic and find out from Dev how was the file created etc. cheers