PE> How do you know that "^{at}" is read as two characters? Show me a
 PE> program that demonstrates the problem. And once again, the BARE
 PE> MINIMUM program. 

      str = "^{at}^A"  
      length str,len
      print len           3
      print str          ^@

  The ^B shows as only one character and prints correctly. The same
applies to all the control characters. If I use a real 00 in place of
^{at} Telemate won't handle anything. It sulks.

 PE> What are the two characters? Can you print them out?

  It prints carats. If I open a file and ask Telemate to WRITE to the
file, is inserts carats. But all string operations think there are two
characters there. ^A to ^Z behave properly (one character each). The
same applies to ^^. I have to use ^^ in a string to get one ^, and the
same applies to "" but iut only counts as one character. Telemate is
mad! The guy tried to do something clever and it bit him on the bum.
Microsoft did the same thing with Word and printing, and they stuffed
it too. 

 PE> When I type in Alt-255 it seems to print a blank, so perhaps
 PE> it's OK after all, it just doesn't display. 

  I get a blank, but it seems to work okay (like Alt-32 space). The
ones I can't enter with Alt-nnn are ^J (0d) and ^Z (1a).

 PE> You could write a lookup function that treats "^{at}" as a special
 PE> case.

  I'm getting really shitty with Telemate!

  I wrote my long ascii string, with ^{at} up the front, and "" for " and
^^ for ^. Telemate is mad! ^{at} is two characters, and so is ^^, but ""
is only one character and so is ^A,^B,^C etc to ^Z^[. Instead of a
string of 256 characters I get 258, so I wrote an IF statement to
skip over the extra numbers and everything worked! Wonderful!! And
then I find that the Telemate string handling statements are not case
sensitive! The bloody thing can't tell the difference between a and A!

  I'm rooted. I can't use a string of characters, and the file idea
doesn't work because Telemate can't handle 00. I can't put ^{at} in the
file because it's two characters! Shit! I wrote an ascii.dat file with
all the ascii and nothing else, and I've got the crc calculator
working, and a routine that turns integers into characters. All I need
is a way around bloody 00. It's a real mongrel to be hung up on
nothing. :-)

  But I tell you what, this programming caper suits my devious scorpio
mind. I can already see a way around it!  The DOS file idea won't work
for 00 and the control characters, so I need to do BOTH! - have a
string for the controls up to 27, and a file for the rest, and an IF
statement between! What a shambles! It might be easier to rewrite
Telemate.

  I ran the crc calaculator on the 128-byte buf string, and it took
20-seconds to give an answer! Bloody hell. It's as slow as a wet
weekend.

 PE> Send the message to the author in the echo. BFN.

  I'd rather send him a bomb!

Regards,
Bob
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

--- PQWK200