bug#66698: I think hex decoding with basenc -d --base16 should be case-insensitive

[Pádraig Brady]

On 23/10/2023 10:37, Niels Möller wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the docs for basenc --base16 says "hex encoding (RFC4648 section 8)".
> The referenced section in that RFC says
>
>    Essentially, Base 16 encoding is the standard case-insensitive hex
>    encoding and may be referred to as "base16" or "hex".
>
> I think it would be both more useful, and consistent with docs, if
> basenc -d --base16 accepted either upper- or lowercase hex digits.
>
> Current behavior, with basenc (GNU coreutils) 9.1:
>
>    $ echo 666F6F0A |basenc --base16 -d
>    foo
>    $ echo 666F6f0A |basenc --base16 -d
>    fobasenc: invalid input
>
> I think both inputs should give the same output, "foo\n", at least by
> default. Possibly configurable with options like --strict, --upper,
> --lower, etc (--upper/--lower would be useful also for the --base16
> encoding, i.e., no -d).

Agreed.
Will apply the attached later.
Marking this as done.

thanks,
Pádraig

basenc-lower-hex.patch
Description: Text Data