how to convert string to binary integer file using command line under linux

Question

What i want is to take an integer represented as a string, for example "1234", and convert it to a file called int, containing a 32-bit big endian integer, with the value 1234.

The only way I have figured out to do this is something like

echo 1234 | awk '{printf "0: %08X", $1}' | xxd -r > int

which is a bit nasty!

Does anyone know a better way?

Answer 1

A slightly simpler way would be:

printf "0: %08X" 1234 | xxd -r > int

Answer 2

ok well seeing that mark williams seems to have gone awol i will post the corrected version of his answer

echo 1234 | perl -e 'print pack("N", <STDIN>); > int