«

Hi,

I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
(and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?

Thanks,
T.

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Trans <> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
> (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>
> Thanks,
> T.
>
Here's one way:

require 'base64'

str = Base64.encode64('\0\1')
# => "XDBcMQ==\n"
Base64.decode64(str)
# => "\\0\\1"

HTH
Sean

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <> wrote:
> I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
> (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?

What sort of encoding do you have in mind? Hexadecimal? Base64?

-mental

On Mar 26, 4:27 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
> > (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>
> What sort of encoding do you have in mind? Hexadecimal? Base64?

I'm using a two-way encryption algorithm to create a registration key.
The encryption algorithm produces an arbitrary byte string. I need to
encode that into something I can give to a end-user, ie. an
alphanumeric string.

Base64 is close but not quite [a-zA-Z0-9].

T.

On Mar 26, 4:44*pm, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 26, 4:27 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
> > > (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>
> > What sort of encoding do you have in mind? *Hexadecimal? *Base64?
>
> I'm using a two-way encryption algorithm to create a registration key.
> The encryption algorithm produces an arbitrary byte string. I need to
> encode that into something I can give to a end-user, ie. an
> alphanumeric string.
>
> Base64 is close but not quite [a-zA-Z0-9].
>
> T.

How about a proper subset [a-f0-9] ?

irb(main):001:0> readable = "\0\1ALf\3=".unpack('H*')
=> ["0001414c66033d"]
irb(main):002:0> original = readable.pack('H*')
=> "\000\001ALf\003="

-T3ch.dude

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:44:12 +0900, Trans <> wrote:
> On Mar 26, 4:27 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
>> > (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>>
>> What sort of encoding do you have in mind? Hexadecimal? Base64?
>
> I'm using a two-way encryption algorithm to create a registration key.
> The encryption algorithm produces an arbitrary byte string. I need to
> encode that into something I can give to a end-user, ie. an
> alphanumeric string.
>
> Base64 is close but not quite [a-zA-Z0-9].

I see. Base 62 then? The most direct way is to get things as a bignum
and then convert bases using divmod.

DIGIT_CHARS = ["0".."9", "a".."z", "A".."Z"].map { |r| r.to_a }.flatten
BASE = DIGIT_CHARS.size
DIGIT_VALUES = Hash[*(0...BASE).map { |i| [ DIGIT_CHARS[i], i ] }.flatten]

def convert_base(digits, from_base, to_base)
bignum = 0
digits.each { |digit| bignum = bignum * from_base + digit }
converted = []
until bignum.zero?
bignum, digit = bignum.divmod to_base
converted.push digit
end
converted.reverse
end

def encode(byte_string)
convert_base(byte_string.unpack("C*"), 256, BASE).map { |d|
DIGIT_CHARS[d]
}.join('')
end

def decode(encoded)
convert_base(encoded.split('').map { |c|
DIGIT_VALUES[c]
}, BASE, 256).pack("C*")
end

There are more efficient ways of accomplishing this, of course.

Note that with this implementation, you'd probably want to zero-fill to
whatever standard number of characters and bytes you're using, and of
course a key of all zeroes will result in an empty string.

As a usability thing, I'd also suggest non-uniformly adding dashes or
spaces in standard places to the encoded form, to help users visually
"chunk" the keys if they ever might have to type them in.

-mental

Le 26 mars 2008 à 21:44, Trans a écrit :

> On Mar 26, 4:27 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
>>> (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>>
>> What sort of encoding do you have in mind? Hexadecimal? Base64?
>
> I'm using a two-way encryption algorithm to create a registration key.
> The encryption algorithm produces an arbitrary byte string. I need to
> encode that into something I can give to a end-user, ie. an
> alphanumeric string.

How long is your key ? If it's relatively short, you could use the
mechanism described in the RFC 1760 (S/KEY), which shows a method to
converts a number into a group of 6 small words.

| 0: 3D8B BA84 B4A5 E7E2
| 1: 5F2A 00BE DCF1 E6AD

Becomes :

| 0: SOP BOUT JESS COED BRAG TURF
| 1: BRIM AWAY OR MELT IRE BESS

(It's used in the OPIE implementations on some *nix systems ; on
FreeBSD, I made the above with azertyuiop as a passphrase and

| 22:46 fred@balvenie:~> opiekey -x -n 5 1 zb78774
| 22:46 fred@balvenie:~> opiekey -n 5 1 zb78774

Fred
--
Error: No applicable methods for #<STANDARD-GENERIC-FUNCTION CLOS:SLOT-
VALUE-USING-CLASS 506F939A> with args (#<BUILT-IN-CLASS NULL 5072054C>
NIL ADDRESS) Sorry, what is this "wife" thing? Is it related to the
rumoured existence of something called "life" ? (Arvid Grøtting, SDM)

On Mar 26, 5:24 pm, "t3ch.dude" <t3ch.d...@gmail.com> wrote:

> irb(main):001:0> readable = "\0\1ALf\3=".unpack('H*')
> => ["0001414c66033d"]
> irb(main):002:0> original = readable.pack('H*')
> => "\000\001ALf\003="

Concise, but the resulting string is longer than I would prefer.

Thanks though,
T.

On Mar 26, 5:33 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:44:12 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mar 26, 4:27 pm, MenTaLguY <men...@rydia.net> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:13:23 +0900, Trans <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > I need to take an arbitrary byte string and encode it as alphanumeric
> >> > (and decode it back again). Any pointers on a easy way to do this?
>
> >> What sort of encoding do you have in mind? Hexadecimal? Base64?
>
> > I'm using a two-way encryption algorithm to create a registration key.
> > The encryption algorithm produces an arbitrary byte string. I need to
> > encode that into something I can give to a end-user, ie. an
> > alphanumeric string.
>
> > Base64 is close but not quite [a-zA-Z0-9].
>
> I see. Base 62 then? The most direct way is to get things as a bignum
> and then convert bases using divmod.
>
> DIGIT_CHARS = ["0".."9", "a".."z", "A".."Z"].map { |r| r.to_a }.flatten
> BASE = DIGIT_CHARS.size
> DIGIT_VALUES = Hash[*(0...BASE).map { |i| [ DIGIT_CHARS[i], i ] }.flatten]
>
> def convert_base(digits, from_base, to_base)
> bignum = 0
> digits.each { |digit| bignum = bignum * from_base + digit }
> converted = []
> until bignum.zero?
> bignum, digit = bignum.divmod to_base
> converted.push digit
> end
> converted.reverse
> end
>
> def encode(byte_string)
> convert_base(byte_string.unpack("C*"), 256, BASE).map { |d|
> DIGIT_CHARS[d]
> }.join('')
> end
>
> def decode(encoded)
> convert_base(encoded.split('').map { |c|
> DIGIT_VALUES[c]
> }, BASE, 256).pack("C*")
> end
>
> There are more efficient ways of accomplishing this, of course.

This is perfect for my needs. Thank you.

> Note that with this implementation, you'd probably want to zero-fill to
> whatever standard number of characters and bytes you're using, and of
> course a key of all zeroes will result in an empty string.
>
> As a usability thing, I'd also suggest non-uniformly adding dashes or
> spaces in standard places to the encoded form, to help users visually
> "chunk" the keys if they ever might have to type them in.

Cool.

Thanks again mental,
T.

On Mar 26, 2008, at 3:33 PM, MenTaLguY wrote:
> I see. Base 62 then?

you know that would really be quite useful - base64 has the ultra
annoying property that it includes '/' which breaks urls unless
encoded/decoded.

cheers.

-a
--
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being
better. simply reflect on that.
h.h. the 14th dalai lama