However, afaik, it isn't possible to binmode STDOUT while using -i like this on Window.

As such, I'd suggest opening the input file in read/write mode, binmode the filehandle, seek to the correct offset in the file and overwrite the IP address (using pack if necessary).

As an aside, the file header isn't actually gibberish. It looks like a OLE container document which you could extract data from using OLE::Storage_Lite if you so wished (but you almost certainly don't :-)).

--
John.

Hey John,

In case no one has told you lately...You Da Man!!!
It worked, thanks.

Your problem character, as mentioned in other posts, seems to be Ctrl-Z (between the ± and the á). However I can't reproduce the problem you are having using the sample code below with AS Perl 5.8.7 on Windows XP. Can you make the minimum required changes to the sample code to demonstrate your problem?

use warnings;
use strict;

open outFile, '>', 'test.rsf';
print outFile "ÐÏࡱá                >  þÿ\nThis is plain text";
close outFile;

local @ARGV = ('test.rsf');
local $^I = '.bak';

while (<>)
  {
  chomp;
  print STDOUT (length $_) . " >$_<\n";
  print ">$_<\n";
  }
[download]

Prints:

30 >ÐÏࡱá                >  þÿ<
18 >This is plain text<
[download]

Perl stops reading the file at the first ^Z character, because -i.bak-Mode does not enable binmode. The following oneliner should work:

perl -i.bak -e "BEGIN{binmode STDOUT}" -p test.pl adp.rsf
[download]

As you don't post any code, it's hard to give you a more elegant version though.

You need to binmode STDIN too!

Thanks for the quick response. I tried your suggestion, but got the same result where only a few of the (jibberish) characters were returned, ÐÏࡱ

I didn't post the contents of test.pl because it can really be anything. The real code will does a substitution for host name and IP after it gets past (supposed to get past) the header, but for the test I just have rem statements in test.pl since it is my understanding that the command line does the while <> operation and print loop.

If you know its not test.pl then what is it? Realy, honestly, post the code so we can help.


___________
Eric Hodges $_='y==QAe=e?y==QG@>@?iy==QVq?f?=a@iG?=QQ=Q?9'; s/(.)/ord($1)-50/eigs;tr/6123457/- \/|\\\_\n/;print;