Just a small addition to all this packet formatting talk...

And, don't forget the Base-64 tricks.  *If* you like ASCII (better for
debugging) and you want to send binary values (like a long int) over
the wire, then use can use Base-64 encoding.  You *could* simply use
HEX encoding with a heavy bandwidth penalty.  Base-64 is a compromise.
You can define 1-byte, 2-byte and 3-byte base-64 arguments for any
particular field.  Base-64 says that all ASCII message characters (except
start and stop framing characters) are constrained to the ASCII range
of '0' thru 'o' (which is 64 characters, which is 6 bits).  Then, to encode
a 16 bit binary number, you break it into 3 Base-64 character (6 bits each).

     binary      Base-64 string (I use ASCII '0' as base character)
Eg.  40233  -->  9dY
         0  -->  000
         1  -->  001
        63  -->  00o

The conversion routines are pretty simple.

If you're happy with binary with ESCAPE coding for the framing characters,
then ignore all the above!

Thomas.Coonan@Sciatl.com