- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:27:03 +0100
Awesome, thanks! / Jonas On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Adam Barth <w3c at adambarth.com> wrote: > I've updated http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Crypto to have > getRandomValues return the array. > > Adam > > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote: >> Hi All, >> >> For reference, much of this feedback has been given in the Firefox >> Bugzilla bug. See [1] and forward. >> >> Basically the in/out nature of the getRandomValues function looks very >> bad to me. This is inconsistent with almost every other JS API which >> uses return values rather than in/out arguments. The main exception >> that I can find is Array.splice, but this appears to be so that it can >> return the removed items. >> >> But the main thing that I dislike about in/out arguments over return >> values is that it makes coding with them very cumbersome. This is a >> common pattern in perl: >> >> $tempString = getSomeValue(); >> $tempString =~ s/expression/; >> doStuff($tempString); >> >> This because the =~ operator doesn't return the result of the >> search'n'replace expression which is generally the value that you want >> to use. The same thing is the case with the getRandomValues API as it >> currently exists. The web JS will have to look something like this: >> >> var tempBuffer = new UInt8Array(65536); >> crypto.getRandomValues(tempBuffer); >> doStuff(tempBuffer); >> >> This can be greatly improved if we make getRandomValues return the >> buffer passed to it. That way the following code would work: >> >> doStuff(crypto.getRandomValues(new UInt8Array(65536))); >> >> This will also make it possible to nicely expand the API to take an >> integer which the API would use to create a buffer of the passed in >> size and fill that with random values. Not something we have to do >> right now, but would be easy to add later if we feel the need. >> >> [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440046#c205 >> >> / Jonas
Received on Tuesday, 21 February 2012 02:27:03 UTC