-={ Thursday, 28 April 2016, 01:33:37.560060883 +1000 }=-   
      
   Hey Tony!   
      
    TL> mainly to discuss a project with Maurice.   
      
   Sounds great.  How about trying this just to get us started out;   
      
   -------------- test raw pkt processing start   
   start_regexp="[0-9]{2} [[:alpha:]]{3} [0-9]{2}  [0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}\x00"   
      
   tr '\n' '\37' < raw.pkt | sed -r "s/${start_regexp}/\n&/g" | \   
     sed -r -n "/^${start_regexp}/ p" | \   
     gawk -F'\0' 'BEGIN { OFS = "\0" } { print $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 }' | \   
   temp.msg   
   -------------- test raw pkt processing end   
      
   The start_regexp variable is the ftn datetime stamp and I am using that as the   
   start of the message.  'tr' should replace any fake linefeeds with unit   
   seperators to keep offsets the same.  The first sed call places a linefeed in   
   front of all start_regexp it finds and then the second sed prints all the   
   lines that start with a start_regexp. gawk prints out the resulting null   
   each line (can eliminate this step if that information is wanted/needed).  The   
   end result should be a file with each line contatining exactly one message,   
   null delimited fields.  'wc -l < temp.msg' will yield exactly how many   
   messages are in that file.   
      
   I think this is a great place to start and I'd appreciate any input about the   
   format of temp.data as well as anything that needs troubleshooting, especially   
   sed which can and does vary across different systems.   
      
   Life is good,   
   Maurice   
      
   ... Don't cry for me I have vi.   
   --- GNU bash, version 4.3.42(1)-release (x86_64-atom-linux-gnu)   
    * Origin: Little Mikey's Brain - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001.0)