breaking up strings

[Ben]

I have this data I want to send over the network to the server. It is
working fine except I don't know how to break up the buffer on the receiving
side. On the client I am sending "hostname<BREAK>data<EOF>" The server
receives this packet but how would I break it up?

I usually use structs in C for this but how do structures work in VB2005? I
can define
structure mydata
hostname as string
data as string
end structure

but how does the server know where the hostname stops and the data begins?
In C I would do something like
struct mydata {
char hostname[32]
char data[1024]
}

I guess what I am asking how do I specify the length of a string?

Thanks,
Ben

[Göran Andersson]

There are two major differences between a C char[] and a .NET string:

:: A C char[] is a value type, while a .NET string is an object. If you
put two strings in a struct, it will just contain two references (fancy
pointers).

:: A C char[] is an array of byte values, while a .NET string contains
an array of (16 bit) unicode characters.

What you are recieving over the network is probably either an array of
bytes or a string.

If it's array of bytes you need to decode it into a string, using an
Encoding object. For instance the Encoding.ASCII.GetString() method.

To split it up, you just use the Split method of the string class to
split the string on the <BREAK> character that you used between the
values. The result is an array of string.

Ben wrote:

I have this data I want to send over the network to the server. It is
working fine except I don't know how to break up the buffer on the receiving
side. On the client I am sending "hostname<BREAK>data<EOF>" The server
receives this packet but how would I break it up?

I usually use structs in C for this but how do structures work in VB2005? I
can define
structure mydata
hostname as string
data as string
end structure

but how does the server know where the hostname stops and the data begins?
In C I would do something like
struct mydata {
char hostname[32]
char data[1024]
}

I guess what I am asking how do I specify the length of a string?

Thanks,
Ben

[Ben]

Thank you for excellent explanation. I now understand and have fixed the
problem.

Thanks again,
Ben

"Göran Andersson" <gu***@guffa.com> wrote in message
news:Og****************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

There are two major differences between a C char[] and a .NET string:

:: A C char[] is a value type, while a .NET string is an object. If you
put two strings in a struct, it will just contain two references (fancy
pointers).

:: A C char[] is an array of byte values, while a .NET string contains an
array of (16 bit) unicode characters.

What you are recieving over the network is probably either an array of
bytes or a string.

If it's array of bytes you need to decode it into a string, using an
Encoding object. For instance the Encoding.ASCII.GetString() method.

To split it up, you just use the Split method of the string class to split
the string on the <BREAK> character that you used between the values. The
result is an array of string.

Ben wrote:

I have this data I want to send over the network to the server. It is
working fine except I don't know how to break up the buffer on the
receiving side. On the client I am sending "hostname<BREAK>data<EOF>"
The server receives this packet but how would I break it up?

I usually use structs in C for this but how do structures work in VB2005?
I can define
structure mydata
hostname as string
data as string
end structure

but how does the server know where the hostname stops and the data
begins? In C I would do something like
struct mydata {
char hostname[32]
char data[1024]
}

I guess what I am asking how do I specify the length of a string?

Thanks,
Ben