Creating strings of binary zero characters

[pjfarley3]

I have an application that needs to generate a header record in an otherwise
text file where the header record has a key of binary zero characters in the
first N bytes followed by normal text data like current date and other
file-identifying information.

 

Is there a way to generate a string of binary zero characters of length N
using only gawk?  Or do I need to use another tool to accomplish that task?

 

Peter