Seeing a weird character in my hex dump

[Jan Tooke]

I am looking through my hex dump file to troubleshoot an issue and noticed a * on a line by itself within my file.  I have look through different files and do not notice this.  This is taken from an ADT A08 message (the issue seems to always happen with an A08 message just before an A07) in between the IN2 segment.  Any ideas on what this is or why I am seeing this?

0021240    A   ^   7   1   2   0   1   ^   ^   ^   ^   |   |   |   3   |

           415e    3731    3230    315e    5e5e    5e7c    7c7c    337c

0021260    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

           7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c

0021300    |   |   |   3   |   F   |   ^   ^   ^   ^   0   0   0   0   0

           7c7c    7c33    7c46    7c5e    5e5e    5e30    3030    3030

0021320    ^   |   N   |   |   |   |   0   0   0   2   0   5   9   1   8

           5e7c    4e7c    7c7c    7c30    3030    3230    3539    3138

0021340   r   I   N   2   |   |   4   3   9   3   4   8   5   9   4   |

           0d49    4e32    7c7c    3433    3933    3438    3539    347c

0021360    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   8   9   ^   N   O   N   E   |

           3030    3030    3030    3030    3839    5e4e    4f4e    457c

0021400    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

           7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c

*

0021440    Y   |   |   |   B   P   M   |   |   |   B   |   S   |   |   |

           597c    7c7c    4250    4d7c    7c7c    427c    537c    7c7c

0021460    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

           7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c    7c7c

Thanks!

Jan Tooke

FMOLHS

IS Programmer

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Jan,

I am going to guess this may be your hex dump utility throwing this out (I haven’t a clue why). I don’t see any hex representation to associate with the * almost like it is a display artifact.

Try another hex tool like hcihexdump or hcihd or an editor that has a hex display feature and see if the * persists.

If you look at the file as ascii using a viewer or editor does the * appear?

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Jim Rawls]

Jan,

The od (octal dump) UNIX utility puts an asterisk where lines repeat.  In your example, it looks like the | character (hex 7c) repeats over several lines and it’s just saving it from printing the same stuff over and over.  Notice that the line numbers skipped all the way from 21400 to 21440.

I would echo what Jim said about using hcihd.  IMHO it’s a better tool than od.

[Robert Milfajt]

Jan, you could add the -v flag to the od command and it will display all lines.

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Jan Tooke]

Thanks for the help!

[Author]

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