Alright, guys, let me tell you about this little project I’ve been messing with – “Muscle Hamster”. Sounds kinda funny, right? It all started when I was trying to make a simple script to clean up some text. I had these strings that were URL-encoded, you know, with all those `%2B` and stuff, and I wanted to change them back to normal.
So, I started digging around, trying to figure out how this whole URL encoding/decoding thing works. Turns out, it’s not rocket science. It’s just replacing certain characters with a `%` followed by some numbers. Like, a space becomes `%20`, and a plus sign becomes `%2B`. I needed the reverse of that.
I found some tools online that do this, even some coding examples. But I wanted to do it myself, you know, get my hands dirty. I started messing with some simple code. I remembered something from all the examples I found online that said `%2B` should be a `+`. I think the basic idea is to swap the `%2B` with a `+`, but I might be wrong since this is what everyone says.
First, I tried a few things that didn’t quite work. I even read somewhere that maybe the decoding was already happening on the server-side. I was a little lost there, I’ll admit.
I did some tests. At first I tried to test the symbols I wanted to decode, I wrote them down like this:
- %2B
I kept experimenting, trying different approaches. My code was probably a mess, but hey, that’s how you learn, right? Finally, after a lot of trial and error, I started to see some progress. My little script was actually decoding some of those `%2B` back into plus signs!
It wasn’t perfect yet, but it was a start. I learned a ton about how this encoding stuff works. Like, there’s this whole ASCII chart that shows the codes for each character, and it helped me understand what those numbers after the `%` mean.
I kept tweaking and testing, and eventually, I got it working pretty well. Now, I have this little tool that can decode these URL-encoded strings. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it gets the job done. And the best part is, I built it myself! Feels good, man.
I’ve worked with biology topics, even dinosaurs in Minecraft! I thought to myself that if I could deal with these things, I could definitely deal with this simple task. I don’t know, these things helped me to keep going until I finally made it.
So yeah, that’s the story of my “Muscle Hamster” project. It’s a reminder that even seemingly small things can be a fun challenge and a great way to learn something new. Just gotta keep pushing and not be afraid to make mistakes.
