Losing characters in TCP Telnet transmission - c++

Question

I'm using Winsock to send commands through Telnet ; but for some reason when I try to send a string, a few characters get dropped occasionally. I use send:
int SendData(const string & text)
{
send(hSocket,text.c_str(),static_cast<int>(text.size()),0);
Sleep(100);
send(hSocket,"\r",1,0);
Sleep(100);
return 0;
}
Any suggestions?
Update:
I checked and the error still occurs even if all the characters are sent. So I decided to change the Send function so that it sends individual characters and checks if they have been sent:
void SafeSend(const string &text)
{
char char_text[1];
for(size_t i = 0; i <text.size(); ++i)
{
char_text[0] = text[i];
while(send(hSocket,char_text,1,0) != 1);
}
}
Also, it drops characters in a peculiar way ; i.e. in the middle of the sentence. E.g.
set variable [fp]exit_flag = true
is sent as
ariable [fp]exit_flag = true
Or
set variable [fp]app_flag = true
is sent as
setrable [fp]app_flag = true

Answer 1

As mentioned in the comments you absolutely need to check the return value of send as it can return after sending only a part of your buffer.
You nearly always want to call send in a loop similar to the following (not tested as I don't have a Windows development environment available at the moment):
bool SendString(const std::string& text) {
int remaining = text.length();
const char* buf = text.data();
while (remaining > 0) {
int sent = send(hSocket, buf, remaining, 0);
if (sent == SOCKET_ERROR) {
/* Error occurred check WSAGetLastError() */
return false;
}
remaining -= sent;
buf += sent;
}
return true;
}
Update:
This is not relevant for the OP, but calls to recv should also structured in the same way as above.
To debug the problem further, Wireshark (or equivalent software) is excellent in tracking down the source of the problem.
Filter the packets you want to look at (it has lots of options) and check if they include what you think they include.
Also note that telnet is a protocol with numerous RFCs. Most of the time you can get away with just sending raw text, but it's not really guaranteed to work.
You mention that the windows telnet client sends different bytes from you, capture a minimal sequence from both clients and compare them. Use the RFCs to figure out what the other client does different and why. You can use "View -> Packet Bytes" to bring up the data of the packet and can easily inspect and copy/paste the hex dump.