How to write a binary file using Bash?

Question

My problem is that I need to create a file with this exact bytes: 48, 00, 49, 00.

I cannot use C, perl, other scripting language (the target is an embedded

Answer 1

A couple of more general functions to output integers:

le16 () { # little endian 16 bit binary output 1st param: integer to 2nd param: file 
  v=`awk -v n=$1 'BEGIN{printf "%04X", n;}'`
  echo -n -e "\\x${v:2:2}\\x${v:0:2}" >> $2
}

le32 () { # 32 bit version
  v=`awk -v n=$1 'BEGIN{printf "%08X", n;}'`
  echo -n -e "\\x${v:6:2}\\x${v:4:2}\\x${v:2:2}\\x${v:0:2}" >> $2
}

Use to make an audio WAV file header for iio data stream:

channels=2
bits_per_sample=16
let "block_align = channels * bits_per_sample / 8"    

wave_header () { # pass file name and data size as parameters; rest are constants set elsewhere
  data_size=$2
  let "RIFFsize = data_size + 44 - 8"
  let "bytes_per_sec = sampleHz * block_align"

  echo -e -n "RIFF" > $1
    le32 $RIFFsize $1
  echo -e -n "WAVEfmt " >> $1
    le32 16 $1  # format size
    le16 1 $1   #format tag: 1 = PCM
    le16 $channels $1
    le32 $sampleHz $1
    le32 $bytes_per_sec $1
    le16 $block_align $1
    le16 $bits_per_sample $1   # bits per sample
  echo -e -n "data" >> $1
    le32 $data_size $1
}

Linux iio ADC data capture to WAV file:

sampleHz=8000
milliseconds=15  # capture length 

cd /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0

cat /sys/bus/iio/devices/trigger0/name > trigger/current_trigger

echo 0 > buffer/enable

echo 0 > scan_elements/in_voltage0_en  #
echo 1 > scan_elements/in_voltage1_en  #  
echo 1 > scan_elements/in_voltage2_en  # 
echo 0 > scan_elements/in_voltage3_en  #

echo $sampleHz > sampling_frequency
sampleHz=`cat sampling_frequency`  # read back actual sample rate

let "buffer_length = block_align * sampleHz * milliseconds / 1000"
echo $buffer_length > buffer/length

cd $HOME

echo 1 > /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/buffer/enable
wave_header data.wav $buffer_length
head -c $buffer_length /dev/iio:device0 >> data.wav  # LE16 data
echo 0 > /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/buffer/enable