Eternity SW

From here to eternity

Being a few words describing an ISV journey …

2007-02-02 : To \n or not to \n?

I had a few users complain that the downloads from Eternity Software were failing under XP. The problem seemed to be with Windows XP's compressed folders; the downloads wouldn't unzip. However unzipping using winrar, winzip, etc seemed ok.

Frustrating to say the least!

Through trial and error (and the help from a friend at Otaku Software), it was revealed that the file was one byte too long. The downloadable file up on the web site had its length correct. So the download was adding one extra byte? Weird, but true.

Turns out the header I was constructing for the download script had an additional "\n" and this was the extra byte. Removing the offender restored the file size to its rightful value when downloaded.

I am sure that there is supposed to be two \n's in the header but it might be that when constructing the header for the download, the fact that the header has the extra line about the file length, probably means the surplus \n isn't required.

Programmers hate reading documentation, but maybe I should read some of it next time :-)