Special Character Problem

[Raymond C. Rodgers]

Ed Greshko wrote:
> Ed Greshko wrote:
>> Raymond C. Rodgers wrote:
>>> Hi folks,
>>> I have a rather annoying problem. My company uses a special 
>>> character as a part of a password for an ftp account a Linux server, 
>>> and I cannot seem to get Fedora 9 to connect to the server as a 
>>> result. All the Windows and even Mac clients that connect to that 
>>> server seem to have no problem, it's just that I can't seem to get 
>>> another Linux box to do the same.
>>>
>>> The character keystroke under Windows is ALT-248. Now, I've used the 
>>> Character Map in F9 to identify the character (by using the find 
>>> feature) simply as the degree symbol, though it appears slightly 
>>> different under Windows, which is apparently U+00B0. The catch is 
>>> even when I copy the password from a known good source (an Excel 
>>> file opened in OpenOffice), connection attempts to the server fail.
>>>
>>> Although I have the power to do so, I'm very reluctant to change the 
>>> password because of my co-workers; while they're willing to change 
>>> things, they'd have to update a fair number of ftp programs, and 
>>> frankly aside from my difficulties with it under Linux, it seems to 
>>> be a pretty good password. Obviously, it should be possible to enter 
>>> this password under Linux since it was set on a Linux box, but I 
>>> seem to be out of ideas of how to do it.
>>>
>>> Anyone have any good ideas?
>>
>> I've always thought that when you entered the ALT character in 
>> Windows you had to enter it with a leading 0.  So, ALT-248 really 
>> should be typed "ALT-0248".
>>
>> If I type "ALT-0248" in windows I get ø while if I type "ALT-248" I 
>> do get °.
>>
>> Now you say it look slight different under windows.  Maybe they 
>> actually are different.  I guess what I would do is to create a file 
>> under windows with the character that you need and then cat it on a 
>> terminal window and use it as the input.  I would also use a hex 
>> editor to examine the file to make sure it is the code that you think 
>> it is.
>
> Oh...funny thing I forgot to mention....
>
> When cat in linux the above looks different...  I get º and ° and 
> indeed they are different one is U+00B0 and the other is U+00BA.
>
> I get the feeling that is your difference.
>
> Ed
>
I understand your point, but we have a little piece of documentation 
that describes the character as ALT-248 instead of ALT-0248, and for 
years under Windows I've gotten the em-dash (or a reasonable facsimile 
thereof with ALT-151). I just tried both of those characters with out 
success a moment ago.  Here's what the hexdump has told me: the Windows 
text file containing the character gives me hex b0 for the character, 
but the Fedora version of the text file gives me a 16-bit number "c2 b0" 
as copied from my terminal window. So it looks like it could be an 8-bit 
vs 16-bit (UTF-8 vs UTF-16?) issue...

Any further ideas on how to get around this?

Raymond