Subject: Re: bug#79184: base32/base64: different behavior of -d with invalid input

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 10:17:32 -0700

On 2025-08-06 09:04, Daniel Hofstetter wrote:
> $ echo 'invalid' | base32 -d 2> /dev/null
> $ echo 'invalid' | base32 -d > /dev/null
> base32: invalid input
> $ echo 'invalid' | base64 -d 2> /dev/null
> �{ږ'$
> $ echo 'invalid' | base64 -d > /dev/null
> base64: invalid input

I don't see a bug here. Both programs convert as much as they can, and 
then stop and diagnose a failure if there is one. base32 can't convert 
anything, so it stops right away. base64 can convert the 'inva' as 
that's valid base64 input, so it outputs the converted data before 
finding the "lid\n" which is invalid.