column name with exactly maximum number of characters crashes

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Load shapefile with column name that has maximum allowed number of 
characters (then there is no \x00 behind the column name).
2. .index("\x00") raises ValueError

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Expected behaviour: read shapefile with such a column name

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

Latest download provided.

Please provide any additional information below.

These lines (around 250) should fix the problem (not thoroughly tested, though):

                        if "\x00" in fieldDesc[name]:
                                indx = fieldDesc[name].index("\x00")
                        else:
                                indx = len(fieldDesc[name]) - 1
                        fieldDesc[name] = fieldDesc[name][:indx]

replacing the line

fieldDesc[name] = fieldDesc[name][:fieldDesc[name].index("\x00")]

Original issue reported on code.google.com by marti...@gmail.com on 9 Aug 2011 at 6:42

zhikrullah / pyshp

column name with exactly maximum number of characters crashes #11