Re: MD5

[David Ayers]

Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:

> On Friday, January 24, 2003, at 10:13  am, David Ayers wrote:
>
> > Currently base exports -(NSData *)MD5Digest (but personnally I would 
> > have preferred md5Digest :-)...)
>
>
> I'm happy to change that.... will do it next. 

:-)

> As regards other methods, my feeling is that most of them are trivial 
> and should not really be put in the base library
> (or common additions).
>
> I like the idea you (I think) suggested in an earlier email, of a new 
> category method of NSData ...
>
> - (NSString*)hexadecimalRepresentation;
> [snip]
> - (NSData*)hexadecimalRepresentation;
> [snip]
>
> While we could obviously have some convenience methods encapsulating 
> this, my impulse is to keep the API
> as small and simple as possible, and write code like that above, 
> making it clearer what the code is doing.
>
> I don't want to be dogmatic about it though ... if the majority of 
> people want to include several convenience methods,
> I'll do that. 

Trick one.  On the one hand I agree that keeping the API simple is a 
good thing,  On the other hand I believe it's important to have 
convinience methods for expected uses especially for (a) less 
experienced developers and (b) rapid prototyping, and I think (b) is one 
of the GNUstep (OK, *step) strong points.  So I'll just leave it at that 
and remain undecided.(officially ;-) ).

> What are the preferences about a hexadecimal representation method 
> returning NSString or NSData ?

See above :-)

Cheers,
Dave