[q-lang-users] null problemo

[Tim H. <q...@st...>]

Hiya,

I'm trying to write a little utility to read & (manipulate &) write PNM
bitmap image files. 

Reading is OK but I've had to declare that `ord ""=0' around my reader
function[1]; I'm having serious problems writing the ascii NUL byte out -
have tried declaring that `chr 0="\0"' and other variations on a theme, but
every time I try to fwritec the thing, the file truncates prematurely;
running hexdump shows that no byte in the output is set to 00.

I'm unhappy about the `ord ""=0' trick - I would not have expected NUL to
be converted to an empty string, rather to "\0", of course. I've also found
that trying to embed a NUL in the script source causes syntax errors etc,
as presumably the interpreter is seeing that as EOF.

Sources for perusal are at <http://spodzone.org.uk/temp/q-pnm.tgz>. 

Is there an official way to handle this?

Cheers,

~Tim

Footnotes: 
[1]  I had to do this before, as in a `where' clause it had no effect...
this also felt untidy.

[2] this is last day before going on holiday; please excuse a delay to any
responses...

-- 
<http://spodzone.org.uk/>