Which hack is this? (golf challenge?)

[david nicol]

On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 11:52, Gerald Combs wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Hanasaki JiJi wrote:
> 
> > Any thoughts on how to decode the below and determine what it was trying 
> > to send out?
> > 
> > squid[5383]: urlParse: Illegal character in hostname 
> > '%77ww.o%6e%6cine%2du%70d%61%74e-c%65%6e%74%65%72%2ec%6fm'

> 
> Using the ASCII chart generated by "man ascii" the hostname can be
> manually decoded into "www.online-center.com", which apparently hosts
> a floppy-based Linux distribution called Minux.  

How tedious.
[david at chicago david]$ perl -ple 's/%(..)/chr(hex($1))/ge'
'%77ww.o%6e%6cine%2du%70d%61%74e-c%65%6e%74%65%72%2ec%6fm'
'www.online-update-center.com'
[david at chicago david]$ 

I await Mike Coleman's explanation of how to do the same
thing in a python one-liner.

-- 
David Nicol, independent consultant and contractor            312 587 2868
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six days
                           and then pulled an all-nighter. -- `fortune -s`