How do I get "\x90" to be read as the byte value corresponding to the x86 NOP instruction when supplied as a field within the standard argument list in Linux? I have a buffer being stuffed all the way to 10 and then being overwritten into the next 8 bytes with the new return address, at least so I would like. Because the byte sequence being supplied is not read as a byte sequence but rather as characters, I do not know how to fix this. What next?