Jean-Marc,
Julien should really answer this question, because he's the author of the newer QuickDER decoder. But here's what I recall.
In fact, my guessing is that this incompatibility refers mostly about things like breaking OCTET STRING in several parts that must be reattached together when decoding, and the possibility of outputing an element with no explicit length at the start, but an end of element marker at the end.
Right. The quick DER decoder does not decode indefinite length encoding of any type. I believe it also does not decode constructed primitive types (which you described above as an OCTET STRING in several parts). I think those are the only major restrictions.
It also does not support the "streaming" mode of the other ASN.1 decoder. Streaming mode allows decoding of input that is too large to all fit in memory at one time. QuickDer requires the entire encoded object to be in a single contiguous memory buffer when it is decoded.
QuickDer requires that an "arena pool" be supplied as an argument. The arena pool is optional for the other decoder, but strongly encouraged.
The QuickDer decoder does not enforce other DER requirements, such as - elements of a SET OF being sorted in a certain order - no trailing zero bits in bit strings
-- Nelson B _______________________________________________ mozilla-crypto mailing list [email protected] http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-crypto
