On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 11:41:51AM -0800, Guy Harris wrote:
> Joerg Mayer wrote:
>
> >Well, '\0' is a *valid* character in an SSID. Can the string display code
> >deal with it?
>
> Yes. It displays it as \000. But if the SSID has a \0 in it, is it a
> string of "characters" or is it a string of octets, i.e. should it just
> display it in hex?
As mentioned a few months ago: an SSID is specified in 802.11 as octets.
As also menitoned before: Most SSIDs I've come across do tend to contain
ASCII characters for most if not all octets.
> >Also: Will it now start displaying those \xxx sequences?
>
> Yes. If "." is to be considered better than \xxx in that case, what
> makes an SSID different from any other type of string? Should *all*
> strings use "." instead of \xxx? If not, why not?
In this specific instance, I consider '.' to be the better solution - as
it makes traces easier for me to read in a vast majority of cases.
Whether this should be changed in all places: I don't know. The only
other place where I ever noticed this as maybe a bit unreadable are the
"radius passwords". I think the people using these dissectors
should decide this on a case by case basis.
Also mentioned before: The display as ASCII is just a convenient thing
for most people living in areas where a latin alphabet is used. In
other areas of the world - this display will be worthless. Maybe if
soneone feels like it, an option to interpret octet fields as ascii,
latin1, utf-8 ..... could be added to the general preferences. Until
such a time, I'd be happy to have the interpretation as ASCII back :-)
Ciao
Joerg
--
Joerg Mayer <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that
works. Some say that should read Microsoft instead of technology.
