BEncode::DecodeError: invalid string length

[Arsecroft]

EDIT: I think it may have something to do with the way the file's encoded?

I added "puts str.length" before the begin statement, and the number is wildly different from what is expected.

length = 27880
str.length = 2000

When I load up the file (File.open(filename).read) it seems there are escaped chars and I guess ruby unescapes them?

Also, when I use ruby to rewrite the file, it gets much much smaller. 2kb down from 28kb.

--

Every torrent file I've tried to read gives me the same error, "BEncode::DecodeError: invalid string length."

I've tried the torrents in several torrent clients, but they all work.

After editing bdecode.rb and adding two lines to BEncode::parse

       begin
         scanner.pos += length
       rescue RangeError
           puts "scanner.pos = " + scanner.pos.to_s
           puts "length = " + length.to_s
         raise BEncode::DecodeError, "invalid string length"
       end

I get the following output:

irb(main):001:0> require 'bdecode.rb'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> BEncode::load_file("ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent")
scanner.pos = 223
length = 27880
BEncode::DecodeError: invalid string length
       from ./bdecode.rb:62:in `parse'
       from ./bdecode.rb:43:in `parse'
       from ./bdecode.rb:15:in `load'
       from ./bdecode.rb:22:in `load_file'
       from (irb):2
irb(main):003:0> File.open("ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent").stat.size
=> 28105

here's the download link to the torrent file (It's also attatched):
http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

ruby -v:
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]

gem -v:
1.1.0

BEncode gem version: 0.5.0

[Daniel Schierbeck (dasch)]

I think the string may be UTF-8... I'll have to add support for that, then.

[Arsecroft (arsecroft)]

Apparently bittorrent are required to be utf-8.
http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification#Metainfo_File_Structure

I'm not sure if there's a way to make ruby read the unencoded chars,
because then our problem would be solved.

This really isn't even a bug in the library, this is a bug in the
specific file(s), but it would make it a heck of a lot nicer if it
would work despite the faulty torrent files.

[Daxx (b-launchpad-net-d10-karoo-co-uk)]

Try ...
  File.open(filename, 'rb').read

(i.e. open the file in binary mode when using Windows OS)

Daxx

[Daniel Schierbeck (dasch)]

Fixed by Mike Hodgson in master.