.PL




        NAME
             trans - translate character sequences

        DESCRIPTION 

             Trans is a filter which copies the standard input to the 
             standard output, while substituting matched incoming 
             character sequences with assigned output sequences.  The 
             input or output character substitution sequences may be 
             single or multiple character sequences.

             The following command line options are supported;

                  -t<filename>   take translation sequences from the 
                                 specified file.  Translation sequences 
                                 are given by strings of characters 
                                 separated by whitespace, in input-output 
                                 pairs.


             Additionally, you may specify certain special (usually 
        unprintable) characters by escape sequences.  The following 
        escape sequences are supported;

                  \b        - backspace
                  \t        - tab
                  \f        - form-feed
                  \n        - newline (linefeed)
                  \r        - carriage return
                  \w        - space character
                  \z        - no character (used in output translation)

                  \0xnn     - hex number
                  \0nnn     - octal number
                  \mn       - decimal number, where m is a non-zero 
                              digit.




















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        EXAMPLE

             Trans may be invoked in the following manner

                  trans x y z zzzz abc def \0x1aA ESCAPE\wA
             
             this command line will cause trans to perform the following 
             translation on input characters

             each occurrence of the character x will be replaced by the 
             character y.
             
             each occurrence of the character z will be replaced by the 
             character string zzzz.     

             each occurrence of the character string abc will be replaced 
             by the character string def.

             each occurrence of the character string ^[A will be replaced 
             by the string "ESCAPE A".

             If you have a large number of translation sequences, they 
             may be placed in a file which will be read by trans on 
             invocation.  For example the command line;

                  trans -t wordstar.trn < old.doc >new.doc

             Will translate the file old.doc to the file new.doc 
             according to the specification provided in the file 
             wordstar.trn.  You may create a translation file with any 
             text editor, but remember that any space (including new 
             lines) separates input and output strings.  The following is 
             an example of a text file which is used as a translation 
             file.

             AAA abc
             AAB hello
             AAC xxx
             a A
             b B
             c CCC

             Note that when a choice in string substitution exists, trans 
             will select the first longest match.  For example, if the 
             input character stream contains the characters 

                        ....... ABCDEFG , 

             and translation sequences existed for   

                                 ABC   this\wis\wABC    and
                                 ABCD  this\wis\wABCD   and
                                 BCD   this\wis\wBCD,




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        trans would make the substitution for ABCD,  since it was the 
        first and longest match.   

        BUGS

             Trans does not properly handle the ascii NUL character (0) 
             in either the input or output translation character 
             sequences.
















































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