Re: What is the opposite of 'printf'?

[Matthew Woehlke]

Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> I am looking for a way to convert binary data to a format that 'printf' 
> will understand (and more importantly, from which '<something> | sed 
> 's/\\/\\\\/g' | xargs printf' will produce the same output as the 
> input). Am I missing such a utility, or might this be an opportunity for 
> me to write 'unprintf' for coreutils?

Given the remainder of this thread, can one of the maintainers offer an 
opinion on whether or not 'unprintf' (also useful for programmers; 
again, see rest of the thread) would be a useful addition to coreutils, 
or perhaps some other existing GNU project? I already have a usable 
program (the algorithm parts are done, it mainly needs interface 
polishing) that is going to linger as proprietary code if no one is 
interested in it.

--
Matthew
What? This signature /again/?