Echoing the integer-value of a character

[satelliteuser083]

I'd like to echo the interger-value of single characters entered via stdin; in pascal I'd write something like:

print int(inchar)

but I can't find the bash-script equivalent of 'int'. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Edited January 18, 2008 by satelliteuser083

[tyme]

bash doesn't support variable types. in bash, all variable are essentially character strings. as far as how to do what you're looking to do, I'm not really sure...

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Easy one:

 

 

read var1

echo $var1

[neddie]

That just returns the character here.

What I think he wants is the character code, the ascii value of the character entered. But I don't know how to answer it, sorry.

[satelliteuser083]

Yes, neddie, that is what I wanted and your suggestion does only return the character, steve. Thanks, nevertheless.

 

As it happens, I've managed to solve my problem another way, so knowing the value is unimportant. What is bugging me at the moment is the following:

 

I want to return one of three possible values from a script back to its caller, using "return result_value" but get the message

can only `return' from a function or sourced script

Can one of you tell me what "sourced script" means, and, possibly, how to overcome the problem. Thanks

[satelliteuser083]

I stumbled across the following on http://www.webservertalk.com/message1585326.html ; and it does exactly what I need. : :P

 

ord()
{
if [[ $1 ]]
then
 echo "$(od -td1 <<<"$1" | awk 'NR==1{print $2}')"
else
 exit 1
fi
}

for i
do
 for ((j=0; j < ${#i}; ++j))
 do
ch=${i:$j:1}
dec=$(ord "$ch")
echo -e "char: '$ch'\t ord: $dec"
 done
done

 

Great stuff.