editing a binary file

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009, Anton Shterenlikht wrote:

> I'm creating binary files in fortran.
> Fortran adds 4 byte record delimiters at the beginning
> and the end of each record, which, in the case of a binary
> file, is just at the beginning and at the end of the file.
> I need to delete these record delimiters, because the
> software I use to visualise the binary files interprets
> them as data. But I don't know how. I've looked at
> hexdump and od, but those are only dumping (I think)
> file contents, and I cannot see how to edit a file with them.

truncate -4 myfile should get rid of the last four bytes.  Maybe there's 
a similar efficient way to truncate the start of a file.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA