[97557] in RedHat Linux List
Re: strange characters killing terminal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jan Carlson)
Tue Nov 3 16:50:38 1998
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 16:49:51 -0500
From: Jan Carlson <janc@iname.com>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Michael Jinks wrote:
> This is a pretty important problem for me and I'd appreciate any help I
> can get.
>
> I'm using a Redhat 5.1 box to capture report printouts from a legacy
> system over its serial port. So far everything has gone fine, but the
> report we're printing now seems to have lots of characters in it that my
> terminal sessions don't like. If I try to "tail" or "head" the file, I
> get a dash and one of those solid rectangle characters, and my login
> hangs and must be killed; can't even send a break.
Simple. $ less filename
Less can safely display anything,
although it does translate them to a human-readable form.
So can emacs.
When you're in less, press capital-F.
That puts it into "tail -f" mode, where it still safely displays
any and all binary characters.
>
>
> I can view the file in less, but it looks pretty crazy. Regular, just
> crazy. I'm not sure how well this will come across via e-mail, but the
> excerpt below _should_ be mostly in English, and it obviously isn't:
>
> HESC-^@ESCr^@ESCP
>
> ^RESCFESC
> HESC-^@ESCr^@ESCP
> ^RESCFESCHESC-^@ESCr^@ESC2ESCP
> 614785 DON P D.O. 02/20/1997 0 0 15
> 0.00 ^
>
> All of the "ESC" sequences and several of the ^ and @ symbols are
> highlighted, in case it matters.
>
> Other than refusing to display, everything seems to be going okay; the
> file is steadily growing on the disk, it's just ugly. None of our other
> reports have done this (same machines, same data set, but a different
> type of report).
>
> Is this likely to be a terminal emulation issue? The legacy end of the
> chain thinks that it's printing to a dot matrix printer, again in case
> it matters.
>
> --
> Michael Jinks
> mailto:michael@twopoint.comhttp://www.twopoint.com
> Systems Administrator, Two Point Conversions, Inc.
>
> "Never interfere in a boy and girl fight." -- W. S. Burroughs
>
> --
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--
Jan Carlson
janc@iname.com Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
Mailed with Netscape 4.5 on Red Hat Linux 5.1
--
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