For pipes, the correct number of bytes is read. For all other devices, the correct number of blocks is read without distinguishing between a partial or complete block being read. Any trailing new- line character is discarded. Each input record is con- verted to a fixed length output record where the length is specified by the cbs operand. Input records shorter than the conversion record size are padded with spaces.
Input records longer than the conversion record size are truncated.
The number of truncated input records, if any, are reported to the standard error output at the completion of the copy. When an in- put error occurs, a diagnostic message followed by the current input and output block counts will be written to the standard error output in the same format as the standard completion message. If the sync conversion is not specified, the input block is omitted from the output. Do not truncate the output file. This will preserve any blocks in the output file not explicitly written by .