-={ Tuesday, 26 April 2016, 10:09:17.273613146 +1000 }=-

Hey Tony!

 TL> Will see if I can get onto TUXPOWER.

Near as I can tell it shouldn't be a problem seeing it shows up as
https://fidonet.ozzmosis.com/echomail.php/tuxpower which if I am not mistaken
is run by one of your partners in crime (ie a fellow Aussie).  I think he might
even be in the same net as you.

 TL> Yes, sounds like the place to go.

For sure.  Also it being a dead echo that was orignally planned as a place to
talk scripting seems like a much better plan than starting one out from
scratch.

 TL> Text manipulation is not my strongest suit (in any language - it's a PITA

It can be.  However there are many ways to skin a cat and as far as null
terminated data is concerned this sort of idea can make it simpler;

  gawk -F'\0' '{ print $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 }' raw_msg.file

Note there isn't a need to translate the nulls into anything else but I am sure
we'd want to get more complicated than the above in order to do anything truly
meaningful with it.

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)