sending zero bytes over TCP socket

hi,

i've been having trouble sending zero bytes (0x00) over a TCP socket in a C prog. Apparently, the null byte serves as a terminator and a buffer holding such is "truncated" at the first zero byte instance.

Anyone have a suggestion round this?

thanks

What does your send-code look like. As far as I know, TCP is a binary protocol, and doesn't "care" what your data looks like.

--
Mats

Well, according to the definition of write() the buffer argument is an array of (well 'pointer to' anyway) characters (bytes)...

NAME
write - write output

SYNOPSIS
int write(fd, buf, nbyte)
int fd;
char *buf;
int nbyte;

In my case i'm trying to send video byte stream. Everything works ok if the data sent is text based since 0x00 stands for null in ascii. But in my case 0x00 stands for nothing in particular and is occuring very frequently.

Here's the "write" part of the code. Messy but that's not the point currently. in_buff is filled by a seperate thread.

unsigned char in_buff[256];
unsigned char buffer[256];

...
memcpy(buffer, in_buff, 256);
pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);

n = write(sock,buffer,strlen(buffer));
if (n < 0) error("ERROR writing to socket");


thanks for you help!

Yes, char is a generic type that corresponds (in 99% of machines) to byte.

But the problem with your code is that you are using strlen() to figure out the amount of data to send - strlen works fine on strings, but not on binary "any data", - as you've seen, it stops at a zero-byte. [And actually, if you wanted to transmit a string, you may want to use strlen(buff)+1, to include the zero-byte in the send operation].

--
Mats

ahhh right as rain you are!
and i'm plainly embarassed!

thanks a million!