| OD ( 1 ) | USER COMMANDS | OD ( 1 ) |
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--format=c, --format=C and --format=O interpret bytes as characters in the LC_CTYPE locale category. The three types differ only in the C style escape sequences recognized; --format=C explicitly allows future extensions. The backslash character is written as `\' and NUL is written as `\0'. Other non-printable characters are written as one three-digit octal number for each byte in the character. Printable multi-byte characters are written in the area corresponding to the first byte of the character; the two-character sequence `**' is written in the area corresponding to each remaining byte in the character; the remaining bytes for -p are written as ` '. If --skip or --count position the file into the middle of a multibyte character then the entire multibyte character is silently treated as non-character bytes.
If the output format is specified by one of the obsolete forms (not --format) then the last file argument is interpreted as an offset expression if it matches the extended regular expression +?[0-9]+\.?[bkm]?(ll|LL)? . In this case the first offset bytes of the file are skipped. The optional b means bytes, k means Kb, and m means Mb. ll and LL are ignored for compatibility with some systems.