rdr1442

Read an IBM 1442 retro style punch card deck (created with pun1442) into a text file.

When reading the following punched card (created with pun1442):

The resulting text file contains:

 &-0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR/STUVWXYZ:#@'="[.<(+|]$*);^\,%_>?

Other examples of what can be done with rdr1442 can be found at https://github.com/Pynckels/rdr1442/tree/main/tests/testOut

The commands to create the examples can be found at https://github.com/Pynckels/rdr1442/blob/main/tests/runtests.sh

Note

This is a work in progress, constructive comments are appreciated.

Installing

Linux

The easiest way to install rdr1442 is as follows.

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/Pynckels/rdr1442.git
pip install -r ./rdr1442/requirements.txt
chmod +x ./rdr1442/rdr1442

Mac & Windows

Contact me and we'll cook something up together.

Syntax

To get the command line syntax the -h and the --help option can be used.

~/rdr1442/rdr1442 --help

This results in the following information.

usage: rdr1442 [-h] [-o <Output file>] [-v] [-y] <Input file>

Print a text file to PDF in IBM 1403 retro style

positional arguments:
  <Input file>          File to process or - for stdin.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o, --outfile <Output file>
                        Output file name or - for stdout.
  -v, --version         Show program version and exit.
  -y, --overwrite       Overwrite output file.

License

Copyright (c) 2025 by Filip Pynckels

This file is part of the rdr1442 project that can be found at https://github.com/Pynckels/rdr1442

rdr1442 is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

rdr1442 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with prt1403. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Acknowledgements

Punched Cards : This project uses the Control Data Corporation 5081 made available on the website of the University of Iowa (Department of Computer Science) as part of the Punched Card Collection by Douglas W. Jones : https://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/collection/i-onefield.shtml#CDC5081