Michael wrote: > John, > > Since I'm new to Python, I'm having trouble understanding what this > means (see below). Would appreciate any help. > > if strg[-1] == "\0":
If the last (i.e index -1) byte in the string equals ASCII NUL: > strg = strg[:-1] then take a slice of the string from the start up to but not including the last byte and assign that to "strg" In other words, if the last byte of strg is NUL, throw it away. The truly paranoid would code that as if strg and strg[-1] etc etc so that it wouldn't blow up if strg is empty -- strange things can happen when you are reading other people's data :-) Perhaps you should work through the tutorial; all the above concepts are treated in this section: http://docs.python.org/tut/node5.html#SECTION005120000000000000000 HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list