Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: ASCII/EBCDIC Translation
Summary: Is source available?
Message-ID: <439@minya.UUCP>
Date: 24 Dec 87 23:11:30 GMT
References: <425@minya.UUCP> <1987Dec15.101835.3795@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: home
Lines: 32

> # In article <425@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
> # )...  Are there 64 codes that can be trusted to any ASCII/EBCDIC translators,
> # )and will come out the same when fed to any other EBCDIC/ASCII translator?
> # 
> # The upper *and* lower case alphabet and the digits together make up 62 of
> # these characters.  Anyone have suggestions for the two more to go?
> 
> Yes, + and -. Why? Because it has already been done that way. A couple of
> programs called rscs{en,de}code were written by Reg Quinton & Ken Lalonde
> to protect news batches flowing over BITNET/NetNorth a year or two ago.

This sounds like a useful pair of programs; is the source PD?  If not, it
would be trivial to write them, if the authors would tell us just what the
mapping is.  I could do my own version in maybe 15 minutes, I guess, but
I'd likely use a different mapping, and their rscsdecode would mistranslate
my rscsencoded file.  I'd make the guess that the order is "0-9A-Za-z+-",
but it'd be nice to know fer shur.











[To satisfy inews' requirement for more new text than quoted :-]

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)