On 04/02/2011, at 17:49, Boris Zbarsky wrote: > On 2/4/11 11:37 AM, Jorge wrote: >> Wrt to the note "some base64 encoders add newlines or other whitespace to >> their output. atob() throws an exception if its input contains characters >> other than +/=0-9A-Za-z, so other characters need to be removed before >> atob() is used for decoding" in http://aryeh.name/spec/base64.html , I think >> that in the end it's better to ignore any other chars instead of throwing, >> because skipping over any such chars while decoding is cheaper and requires >> less memory than scanning the input twice, first to clean it and second to >> decode it, something you'd not want to end up doing -just in case- everytime. > > The problem is that at least some current browsers (which ones?) throw. So > you wouldn't be able to rely on the non-throwing behavior anyway.... :(
On the other hand, it will be so forever unless the spec says *not* to throw but to skip over instead, so that in a few years the cleanup can be ~safely skipped. -- Jorge.
