ASA(1)

📦
version 89 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

💅 ASA(1) — interpret carriage-control characters ✨

Okay bestie, so you know how FORTRAN is out here living its best life with these little secret code characters at the start of every line? Yeah, asa is the icon that translates all that for your regular printer. Let me put you on. 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

asa [file ...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The asa utility reads files sequentially, mapping FORTRAN carriage-control characters to line-printer control sequences, and writes them to the standard output. It’s literally doing the translation work so your line printer doesn’t have to. 💖

The first character of each line is interpreted as a carriage-control character. The following characters are interpreted as follows, no cap:

  • ⟨space⟩ — Output the rest of the line without change. Chill. Default vibe. ✨
  • 0 — Output a ⟨newline⟩ character before printing the rest of the line. It’s giving "double space me, queen." 💅
  • 1 — Output a ⟨formfeed⟩ character before printing the rest of the line. New page, new me. 🦋
  • + — The trailing ⟨newline⟩ of the previous line is replaced by a ⟨carriage-return⟩ before printing the rest of the line. Overlay realness. 🎀

Lines beginning with characters other than the above are treated as if they begin with ⟨space⟩. So if it’s not one of the cool kids, it’s getting the default treatment. Periodt. 💀

🔥 EXIT STATUS 🔥

The asa utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. Basically: 0 = slay, anything else = something went off. 😭

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

To view a file containing the output of a FORTRAN program:

asa file

To format the output of a FORTRAN program and redirect it to a line-printer:

a.out | asa | lpr

Look at that pipeline. Main character energy. 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

  • f77(1)

⭐ STANDARDS ⭐

The asa utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”). Standards? She has them. 👑

💜 AUTHORS 💜

J.T. Conklin, Winning Strategies, Inc. We stan. 🫶

Okay bestie, that’s the whole manual. Now go forth and interpret those carriage-control characters like the Unix icon you are. 💖

— with love from the Debian crew, May 9, 2002, ASA(1) 🎀

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