Re: Use base32?

On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 10:58 PM, Michael Steuer
[off-list ref] wrote:

On 20/03/2017 16:21, Jason Hennessey wrote:

quoted

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

quoted

quoted

Linus Torvalds writes ("Re: RFC: Another proposed hash function
transition plan"): > > Of course, having written that, I now realize how it
would cause

quoted

problems for the usual shit-for-brains case-insensitive

filesystems. > > So I guess base64 encoding doesn't work well for that
reason.
Given that the idea was to encode the new hash in base64 or base85, we
*are* talking about an encoding. In that respect, yes, it can be whatever
encoding we like, and Linus just made a good point (with unnecessary foul
language) of explaining why base64/base85 is not that encoding.

Since the hash format is switching anyway, how about using base32
instead of hex?

Still get a 20% space savings over hex (minus a little for padding), and
it's guaranteed to be a single case.
Jason

If base32 is being considered, I'd suggest the "base32hex" variant, which
uses the same amount of space.

I don't see the benefit of adding characters like 0 and 1 which
conflict with some of the letters? Since there's no need for a human
to decode the base32 output, it's easier to use the one that's less
likely to get screwed up when typing if that ever happens. It's not
like we actually need to know what value each character represents.
(sure the program does, but the human does not).

Thanks,
Jake