[zeromq-dev] RFC 32 - Z85

[Pieter Hintjens]

On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Sebastian Lauwers
<sebastian.lauwers at gmail.com> wrote:

> Any specific reason to create Z85 instead of going with Base64, which
> doesn't present the escape characters drawback that Ascii85 has? I
> understand that there's a few percent difference in terms of efficiency,
> but, other than that?

The added efficiency was one reason; the other is that Base85 uses
groups of 4 bytes which fits our 32-byte keys better.

> Also, to be clear, the format would only be used as a means to represent
> binary data in source files, and would not be sent over the wire, correct?

Correct, it's only for source code and config files and perhaps
sending by email.

> I couldn't find the reference implementation in the rfc repository, the src
> folder only seems to contain an implementation for rfc27.

It should be in the libzmq master now. I've got a commit ready to push
to the rfc repo but haven't finished it.

-Pieter