distinguish between binary text and regular text

[zvika]

How can I distinguish between binary text and regular text ?

For example:
I want to convert the value of SYSOT to hex values,
and to keep the value of SYSOT1 the same.

01 SYSOT VALUE '^@^X^@^A^@^AA' PIC X(07).
01 SYSOT1 VALUE 'ABC' PIC X(07).

 

[Anno Siegel]

How can I distinguish between binary text and regular text ?

That distinction doesn't make much sense. All data is binary on a
standard computer. Text is simply (binary) data intended to be
decoded and rendered in form of characters. There is no way you can
look at a piece of data and decide "This is text" or "This isn't".

For example:
I want to convert the value of SYSOT to hex values,
and to keep the value of SYSOT1 the same.

01 SYSOT VALUE '^@^X^@^A^@^AA' PIC X(07).
01 SYSOT1 VALUE 'ABC' PIC X(07).

From your example it looks like you want to recognize control characters.
That can be done with a regex and a POSIX character class:

$string =~ /[[:cntrl:]]/ and print "Contains a control character\n";

If you are looking for something else, check out other predefined
character classes or build your own.

Anno

 

[Jürgen Exner]

How can I distinguish between binary text and regular text ?

That depends on _your_ definition of 'binary' versus 'regular' in the
context of _your_ program, e.g. do you consider the byte sequence for a
Chinese character in UTF-8 which is encoded in Base64 to be regular text or
binary text?

For example:
I want to convert the value of SYSOT to hex values,
and to keep the value of SYSOT1 the same.

01 SYSOT VALUE '^@^X^@^A^@^AA' PIC X(07).
01 SYSOT1 VALUE 'ABC' PIC X(07).

Sorry, this example doesn't help much to explain what you want to do.
One possible interpretation could be printable versus non-printable
characters. In that case you may want to check the 'print' class in 'perldoc
perlre'.
If you mean something else then please let us know what you mean.

jue