Special Character Problem

[Ed Greshko]

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

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