Passing binary data as arguments in bash

Question

I need to pass binary data to a bash program that accepts command line arguments. Is there a way to do this?

It\'s a program that accepts one argument:

Answer 1

Save your binary data to a file, then do:

script "`cat file`"

Answer 2

Use the $'' quote style:

script $'\x02\xc5\xd8'

Test:

printf $'\x02\xc5\xd8' | hexdump -C
00000000  02 c5 d8

Answer 3

Bash is not good at dealing with binary data. I would recommend using base64 to encode it, and then decode it inside of the script.

Edited to provide an example:

script "$(printf '\x02\xc5\xd8' | base64 -)"

Inside of the script:

var=$(base64 -d -i <<<"$1")

Answer 4

How about this?

$ script "`printf "\x02\xc5\xd8"`"

Answer 5

script "`printf "\x02\xc5\xd8"`"
script "`echo -e "\x02\xc5\xd8"`"

test:

# echo -n "`echo -e "\x02\xc5\xd8"`" | hexdump -C
00000000  02 c5 d8                                          |...|