in reply to Mixed text and binary file

Set binmode at the beginning, and set $/ = 'Binary:';. Do a single read from the filehandle with $text = <FILE>. Then set $/=\64;, and subsequent reads with $chunk = <FILE> will be 64 bytes at a chunk.

Another approach is to use tell once you've found the exact location of Binary:, then seek and read from that point. In this case, I would still start out by setting $/ = 'Binary:', so that I wouldn't have to worry about counting backwards from the next apparent newline to 'Binary:'.


Dave

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Mixed text and binary file
by ahoriuch (Acolyte) on Feb 20, 2014 at 21:10 UTC

    Thanks! Based on your feedback this works. It never ceases to amaze me what perl can do! I'm first preserving the ASCII portion of the file other purposes. 

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $raw_file="spectrebin.raw";

open (FILE,$raw_file);

foreach my $line (<FILE>) {
   if ($line=~/^Binary:/) {
      #Do not read the binary part as ascii
      printf "ASCII: $line";
      last;
   } else {
      #the ascii part
      printf "ASCII: $line";
   }
}
close(FILE);

open (FILE,$raw_file);  
binmode(FILE) or die "ERROR> Could not read binary file";

$/ = "Binary:\n";
my $text = <FILE>;

my $buffer;
while ((read (FILE, $buffer, 64))!=0) {
   my $binary = unpack("B64",$buffer);
   printf "Binary: $binary\n";
}
close(FILE);

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      It never will cease to amaze you ... what Perl can do ... This language has been called a Swiss-Army Knife, and it deserves the accolade.
[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom