> the server wants to get info a certain way. Each message has to start
> with an ascii "STX" (literally the three letters, not the standart ascii
> 'STX') then it has to have another four bytes that give the length of
> the message, then the message itself, then end with an ascii "ENX"
> (again,the three letters, not the ascii character "ETX" ).
>
> So here is where the biggest gap in my understanding is... how do i send
> ascii characters ?
You can just send the string of characters or you could use the struct
module to compose the byte string with more control. But in this case
a simple string should suffice.
> the docs say that if the password is not 24 bytes long, the other bytes
> must be filled with null values. How do i do that ? What is a null
> value?
Check an ASCII table but I beliebe ASCII NULL is zero, so
null = chr(0)
should get you a null character.
Or even use escape characters:
null = '\x00
or even
null = '\0'
Then pad your string with
target = 24
mystring = 'spam'
padding = null * (target - len(mystring)-6)
passwd = 'STX' + mystring + padding + 'ENX'
> python strings are ascii already , right ? would this be as simple as
> simply passing the string to the socket.send('pythonAsciiString') ?
Yep, or you could specify UTF8 if you want to protect against any risk
of Python becoming 16bit Unicode by default! :-)
HTH,
Alan G
Author of the learn to program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld
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