Hello, I've noticed a lot of binary protocols require variable length bytestrings (with or without a null terminator), but it is not easy to unpack these in Python without first reading the desired length, or reading bytes until a null terminator is reached. I've noticed the netstruct library (https://github.com/stendec/netstruct) has a format specifier, $, which assumes the previous type to pack/unpack is the string's length. This is an interesting idea in of itself, but doesn't handle the null-terminated string chase. I know $ is similar to pascal strings, but sometimes you need more than 255 characters :p. For null-terminated strings, it may be simpler to have a specifier for those. I propose 0, but this point can be bikeshedded over endlessly if desired ;) (I thought about using n/N but they're :P). It's worth noting that (maybe one of?) Perl's equivalent to the struct module, whose name escapes me atm, has a module which can handle this case. I can't remember if it handled variable length or zero-terminated though; maybe it did both. Perl is more or less my 10th language. :p This pain point is an annoyance imo and would greatly simplify a lot of code if implemented, or something like it. I'd be happy to take a look at implementing it if the idea is received sufficiently warmly. -- Elizabeth