Thank you Guy, Steven, and Robert for solving the problem. I appreciate 
it. Never occurred to me it could be a control-z problem. Robert, thanks 
especially for showing the same code using typical Ruby metaphors. This 
also helps a lot.

J K Daniels

>>> re >>>

ts wrote:
>>>>>> "J" == Jay Daniels <jkdaniels / rock.com> writes:
> 
> J> and the next three (unread) bytes in the file are: 1A C0 B5
>                                                       ^^^
> moulon% /usr/bin/ruby -e 'p "%c" % 0x1A'
> "\032"
> moulon%
> 
> 
>  it's Control-Z, use "rb" to open the file
> 
> 
> p.s.:
> 
> moulon% ruby -e 'p "%c" % 0x1A'
> -e:1: [BUG] Segmentation fault
> ruby 1.9.0 (2006-07-14) [i686-linux]
> 
> Aborted
> moulon%
> 
> 
> Guy Decoux


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