crypto for the average programmer

[Travis H.]

On 12/19/05, Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker <richard at levitte.org> wrote:
> unsigned char foo[8];
>
> (no, it isn't fool proof, but close enough after 1 second of thought).

I think C guarantees that a char is a byte, but exactly how wide that
is is processor-dependent.  IIRC, some of the machines it was
developed on had less than 8 bits per byte, but I could be wrong. 
Surely a smaller byte is antiquated, but a wider char is certainly
conceivable.  Things don't really get messy until you start converting
types or communicating them to another machine.  At that point, you
really want to know if your int is 32 bits or 64, big or little
endian, etc.

OTOH, if C was truly as portable as is claimed, GNU autoconf wouldn't
exist.  Scripts are fairly portable; I can run bash scripts in cygwin,
I can run perl scripts using activeperl.  None have required
modification so far, though some use libraries ("modules") that aren't
available on the target.

I realized halfway through this that I was thinking of applications
that use crypto, and not crypto algorithms per se.  But pretty much we
sound like we're in agreement on most things.
--
http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/  -><- P=NP if (P=0 or N=1)
"My love for mathematics is like 1/x as x approaches 0."
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