cgi dat coruption by Internet Explorer 5.0

[Alex Martelli]

"Micheas" <micheas at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:20010513.085031.1953443376.882 at linux.earthlink.net...
> What I am doing:
> I am writing a cgi script in python that connects to a sybase database.
>  The web server is apache on FreeBSSD4.3.  The application lives on an
> intranet with trusted clients so I can dictate what browsers have
> access to the web page and I don't have to be paranoid about security
> when parsing submissions.
> The problem:
>  IE at seemingly random times return 5 character values that begin
> with a '+' and end with '-' and three letters in the middle for commas,
> ampersands, dollar signs, etc. This only happens about 5% of the time

What HTTP headers is your cgi script returning, exactly?  It looks
like the set of HTTP headers and attributes is incomplete and IE5
is "guessing" at the encoding -- maybe if you specify more fully
you'll be able to avoid such "guesses" and get predictable behavior.


Alex