<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000'><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">bah - that is what I feared. The problem I have is not knowing what will be received at each site (depends on vendor) and hoping to find a solution that works with all to prevent re-configs every time someone somewhere adds some new equipment, and worse yet, matching things in a multi-vendor environment when you aren't sure what will come from where.</font><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br><hr id="zwchr"><blockquote style="border-left:2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255);margin-left:5px;padding-left:5px;color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Simon Hobson" <dhcp1@thehobsons.co.uk><br><b>To: </b>"Users of ISC DHCP" <dhcp-users@lists.isc.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, December 17, 2012 11:22:47 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: string data expressions (was Re: using option 82 to assign a static ip-address)<br><br>At Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:03:45 -0500 (EST), perl-list wrote:<br>> So the best solution is to convert everything to binary? <br><br>No, the best solution is to use whatever is best for your situation.<br><br>When dealing with "text" data it's probably easier to deal with text, eg if your device sends a value that is a text string, then do a text comparison <something> ="VLAN 1 Port 4". Similarly for other "text" values such as hostnames, domain names, etc.<br><br>When dealing with "binary" data (such as MAC addresses), it's probably easier to use hex. Eg, <something> = 00:11:22:33:44:55.<br><br>There's no "conversion" involved. To the program, values are collections of bytes - it doesn't care if it's something us humans usually deal with as text, or something that's "not text", it's just a collection of bytes. When specifying a string to match against in the config file, then we have a choice of syntax to use - in either case there's a conversion from the textual representation we use in the config file into a list of bytes. If we use "Text" then the program will convert that text into four bytes, if instead we use 54:65:78:74 then we still end up with the same four bytes after the program has parsed our config.<br><br>-- <br>Simon Hobson<br><br>Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed<br>author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as<br>Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.<br>_______________________________________________<br>dhcp-users mailing list<br>dhcp-users@lists.isc.org<br>https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/dhcp-users<br><br></blockquote><br></div></div></body></html>