OVERVIEW

lit  is a utility written in C which takes as argument numbers in decimal ,
hexadecimal , binary or octal and emits either the corresponding bytes to
stdout or it can be made to consider the bytes as Unicode code points and
emits to stdout the bytes corresponding to the UTF-8 representation of the
code point.

           DOWNLOAD , COMPILATION , INSTALLATION

Since this is only one file of C source there's no tar package. You just
save the file with a  .c  extension (I use a  .txt  extension on the web to
prevent web browsers from trying to open it with a different programme) and you
compile it. It requires a compiler which supports the 1999 C standard or
later but otherwise it doesn't have anything specific to some operating
system. But I have only tested it on Linux.

So if for example you have saved it as  literal.c  then you compile
like
    cc literal.c -o lit
.With  gcc  you do
    gcc -std=c99 -Wall literal.c -o lit

           INSTRUCTIONS

I haven't written a man page because the utility is so simple.

You use it like   lit [-d] [-h] [arg1] [arg2] ...

Each arg can have one of the following forms :

1. If it starts with  l (letter l) then it just prints the remainder of the
   argument as is. For example
       lit lABC
   prints  ABC .
       lit lABC lDEF lGH
   prints  ABCDEFGH .

2. If the argument starts with  u  then the rest of the argument is taken
   to represent a Unicode code point. Actually the utility does not check
   that it's a valid code point , it simply checks that the number is
   <= 7FFFFFFF (hex)  and applies the algorithm which appears in RFC 2279
   (on a Linux system at least , man utf-8  gives the same algorithm). It
   should be noted that RFC 2279 has been obsoleted by RFC 3629 which limits
   the range of values from 1 to 10FFFF (hex). But I think it's convenient
   supporting the wider range because it allows for experimentation and
   possible extensions. After the "u" follows the number denoting the code
   point ; the number has the same format as described in the next step.

3. A number has an optional suffix of  h , d , o , b  for hexadecimal ,
   decimal , octal , binary , respectively. Without a suffix then decimal is
   assumed. So for example
       lit 45 55h 77o 10001010b 77d
   will emit on stdout the octets with values (in decimal) 45 , 85 , 63 ,
   138 , 77. 
   In a hexadecimal number , values 10-16 (decimal) can be given using the
   characters a-f or A-F but the utility will signal an error if in the same
   argument you have both upper case and lower case letters. The rationale
   behind this design decision is that some may prefer upper case letters
   and some may prefer lower case but if some argument has both then
   probably something was mistyped rather than the user preferring it this
   way. In any case , if you don't like the behaviour then modifying the
   source code to eliminate it is easy.

If the  -h  option is given then instead of emitting the octets the utility
will emit the values of the octets in hexadecimal. So
    lit -h 45 55h 77o 10001010b 77d
will print
    2D 55 3F 8A 4D
.This is similar as writing
    lit 45 55h 77o 10001010b 77d | od -A n -t x1

where  od  is the standard Unix utility. The  -d  option is analogous but
prints the octet values in decimal. If both  -h  and  -d  are given on the
command line then the latest appearance takes effect.

Note that the utility without the  -h  or  -d  option does not emit a
newline at the end of its output ; if you want this then you have to give as
last argument 10 or perhaps as last two arguments 13 10 , whatever is
appropriate for your operating system.

Here are some examples :

    lit  u3a3h u3A3h u931 u931d u1110100011b u1643o  CEh a3h  206 10100011b  12o

will print the Greek upper case sigma 8 times followed by a newline character
(assuming you run it on a terminal emulator which understands UTF-8 (xterm
has such a mode but is not the only one) and you have Greek fonts).

The Unicode code point for Greek upper case sigma is 3A3 (hex) and
3A3 (hex) = 931 (decimal) = 1110100011 (binary) = 1643 (octal) .This explains
the first 6 arguments. The next 4 arguments specify the UTF-8 octets individually
instead of giving the code point. So if you do
    lit -h u3A3h
or
    lit -h u1110100011b
or
    lit -h u931
etc. it will tell you that the octets are CE (hex) and A3 (hex). So the 2
arguments  CEh a3h  emit these octets (specifying the numbers in hexadecimal)
and the arguments  206 10100011b  do the same specifying the numbers in
decimal and binary. Finally , 12o  gives newline in octal.

    lit  u3a3h u3A3h u931 l=, u931d u1110100011b u1643o l,= CEh a3h  206 10100011b  12o

will put a "=," after the first 3 sigmas and then a ",=" after the next 3.

    lit u3a3h | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO_8859-7 | od -A n -t x1

This example uses the standard Unix utilities  iconv  and  od .It will
output d3  which is the hex value in ISO/IEC 8859-7 encoding for the Greek
upper case sigma. Note that there are plenty of Unicode code points which
cannot be represented in 8859-7 but Greek sigma can. Note also that ,
although iconv  is standard , exactly which encodings it supports and the
precise formats you have to give to the  -f  and  -t  options is implemen-
tation dependent ; the above invocation of  iconv  works on Linux. If your
terminal emulator has a 8859-7 mode then putting it in that mode and doing

     lit u3a3h | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO_8859-7

will output a Greek upper case sigma.

           LICENSE

You are free to do anything you want with the code and documentation a.k.a.
public domain.

           CONTACT

For bug reports or comments my email {written backwards} is
moc.liamg@uobips


    Spiros Bousbouras
    September 2017