To assist our customers to verify that the barcode string calculation
is implemented correctly, we provide a command-line utility called code39gen. This utility is written in perl and requires
perl interprer. You can download perl from ActiveState or perl.org.
If you want to know the details, load this file in a text editor such
as emacs, or Windows notepad.
For more information, enter code39.pl -h .
The image below is taken from a Mac OS/X system:
There are two methods to invoke the program. The first one is universal:
perl code39gen.pl [options]
On Unix platforms (including Mac OS/X), you can treat it as a shell script after you add 'exec' attribute to the file:
chmod +x code39gen.pl code39gen.pl -h
Code39gen accepts three command options, -h, -k and -e. Their usages are listed below:
Code39gen command line options
-hDisplay the program usage
-kAdd modulo 43 check digit to the barcode
-eUse code 39 extended to encode the data. This option must be turned on to create barcode string for extended code 39.
To encode data containing space, you must enclose the whole data with
double quotes. For example, to encode extended code39 for data Apache 12345, the command line is:
code39gen -e "Apache 12345"