unset LC_ALL LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 export LC_CTYPE e= for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f; do for j in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f; do case $i$j in 00) continue ;; esac e="$e\x$i$j" done done # Start a new shell so the locale change is picked up. ee="$(${SH} -c "printf %s \$'$e'")" [ "${#ee}" = 255 ] || echo length bad