title: Explain why "-" is not a "-"
body: <p>I was writing an automation script in python that dealt with sending commands through a Telnet session. For some reason I couldn't get it to work. After a ton of frustrating debugging, I found that when I was translating a command of:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"ulimit -s 1024"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The - in the command became something weird in utf-8. I had to translate it in bytes because I was sending it using Telnet (I know I should use ssh, but it honestly is fine in my case) and I realized it was weird because when I printed the command in bytes it would be:</p>
  
  <pre><code>b"ulimit \x##\x##\x##s 1024"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I don't remember the exact numbers, but I fixed it by copying and pasting a new "-" that I used two lines up in the function and worked fine.</p>
  
  <p>I did copy and paste in the part from two lines up, but I typed the ulimit -s part. I was also using IDLE</p>
  
  <p>Anyone know what happened?</p>