In article [ref] (at Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:22:50 -0500 (EST)), James Morris [off-list ref] says:

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, YOSHIFUJI Hideaki / [iso-2022-jp] $B5HF#1QL@(B wrote:

quoted

I would just disallow name == NULL,
well, what algorithm do you expect?

Good question.  It seems to me to be a bug in the calling code if it is 
trying to look up nothing -- I'd rather not paper that over.

Do you mean that we need to fix the caller?

Well, people may want to get just any algorithm.
In such case,
 - crypto allows name == NULL, and return any algorithm
   (for example, an algorithm that we see first.)
 - caller may filter name == NULL case if it is ambiguous in their context.

--yoshfuji