Re^2: How to edit a PCL file

Yes, binmode does help me in reading the characters as they are. But I'm not sure as to how many bytes I should read at a time. Since PCL files are not regular ASCII files and they are not delimited on "\n", reading them one line at a time is not a simple thing unless I know the line delimiter.

I've been trying to find the line and page delimiter from those characters in the file and using PCL command reference, but I couldn't succeed.

I figured all the commands begin with ESC control code.

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Re^3: How to edit a PCL file by roboticus (Chancellor) on Apr 01, 2010 at 14:38 UTC
GoForIt: There aren't line delimiters in PCL, since the printer doesn't care about "lines" in a control file. Just read the file in fixed-length chunks to do your manipulations. It shouldn't matter how many bytes you process at a time, so I'd choose a relatively large buffer (32K or so). ...roboticus	[reply]
Re^3: How to edit a PCL file by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Apr 02, 2010 at 00:40 UTC
I figured all the commands begin with ESC control code. Since each command starts with the escape character, set `$/ = chr( 27 )`. I dumped a 300 page pdf to a PCL5 printer and the ran over the 300MB file produced counting the length of each 'command' using the following one-liner: `perl -e"BEGIN{ binmode STDIN, ':raw' }" -l -033 -ne"$l{length()}++}{ print $_, '::', $l{$_} for sort{$a<=>$b} keys %l" + HP-PCL5.bin` [download] The results showed that the maximium individual readline length was <2MB, with the vast majority being less than 1k: 0::1048 1::610 2::332 3::2763 4::15235 5::902 6::4896 7::2195 8::2448 9::955 10::9585 11::735 12::766 13::1399 14::30537 15::2323 16::1089 17::399 18::54322 19::1879 20::611 21::171 22::107 23::408 24::1071 25::720 26::738 27::1748 28::1374 29::2025 30::5380 31::3359 32::4704 33::2684 34::4027 35::2016 36::2349 37::1011 38::672 39::1 40::338 41::338 42::2 43::336 44::1 45::335 47::2 49::2 50::1 51::1 54::335 55::1 56::1 57::3 58::335 59::338 60::334 61::336 62::1002 63::1 64::335 67::334 68::335 69::337 72::334 80::1 83::1 90::1 94::1 122::10 230::2 232::6 233::2 242::74 243::2 352::2 353::2 356::2 357::2 362::9 363::2 788::1 2627::1 3363::1 4019::2 6929::1 7045::1 7163::1 7445::1 7972::1 9683::1 9703::1 9726::1 9754::1 ... 998164::1 1001945::1 1008451::1 1016923::1 1017472::1 1019396::1 1023221::1 1030445::1 1032125::1 1044854::1 1049920::1 1056328::1 1056862::1 1060228::1 1063015::1 1065778::1 1066362::1 1067272::1 1068292::1 1069415::1 1070494::1 1071336::1 1072448::1 1072832::1 1073203::1 1075300::1 1076627::1 1082431::1 1083135::1 1097793::1 1098097::1 1100634::1 1101911::1 1103123::1 1107700::1 1109616::1 1111129::1 1113723::1 1116752::1 1126199::1 1129660::1 1132176::1 1136614::1 1142884::1 1144724::1 1162069::1 1164751::1 1167526::1 1172941::1 1174051::1 1174803::1 1178963::1 1181757::1 1209556::1 1227153::1 1241712::1 1241953::1 1255729::1 1264951::1 1265598::1 1267717::1 1269103::1 1269839::1 1273652::1 1275352::1 1278748::1 1279336::1 1291701::1 1298282::1 1305369::1 1326645::1 1355690::1 1361723::1 1373787::1 1382753::1 1393848::1 1433523::1 1465612::1 1571234::1 1586972::1 1595487::1 1620081::1 1630469::1 1643933::1 1653299::1 1694273::1 1712694::1 [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]