Create bh_str2dec()

[merces]

Currently, bh_asc2dec() converts a single char, but we need every byte of a string in decimal, so a bh_str2dec() is needed and this should replace bh_asc2dec().

[whoisroot]

This may will cause problems due to how different encodings represent characters.

For example, the string Cachaça is decoded in the current implementation of bh_str2dec as 67 97 99 104 97 231 97 if you are using an UTF-8 locale, but feeding it back to bh_dec2asc breaks the output string, since 231/0xE7 is not in the ASCII set.

Setting LANG=C before running the command seems to fix the issue, but that is not optimal.

Checking later, I found out that 231/0xE7 is ç in the ISO-8859-1 encoding, so apparently bash's printf is using this charset to encode.

However, the point still stands if you use a character outside of ISO-8859-1: œ turns into 339, which is then converted into 3 when fed back to bh_dec2asc. This is, again, due to how printf (and now also echo) encodes/decodes the strings.

A asciinema capture showing the behaviour:

[whoisroot]

The behaviour MAY be solvable using od to dump to decimal, but this would add another dependency (od) and some dark RegEx magic using sed or perl (which are already dependencies) to clean up the output of od.

I was able to get it working with od using the following pipeline:

echo -n "<string>" | od -t u1 --endian big | sed -r 's/  +/ /g;s/^[0-7]+ ?(.*)/\1/g'

Of course, these problems exist mostly due to decoding behaviour, not just the encoding, and the fact that I'm using bh_dec2asc to get the output. A new bh_dec2str could be more suited for that, but would also probably face the same issues.

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As an easter egg, I leave you this huge decimal sequence obtained from an UTF-8 text:

69 117 32 103 111 115 116 111 32 100 101 32 67 97 99 104 97 195 167 97 32 98 111 97 32 98 97 116 101 110 100 111 32 110 111 32 109 101 117 32 99 111 112 111 32 108 111 103 111 32 112 101 108 97 32 109 97 110 104 195 163 46 10 10 77 105 110 104 97 32 195 161 114 100 117 97 32 116 97 114 101 102 97 32 100 101 32 109 111 110 116 97 114 32 103 97 109 98 105 97 114 114 97 115 32 101 109 32 98 97 115 104 32 115 101 32 116 111 114 110 97 32 109 97 105 115 32 102 195 161 99 105 108 32 99 111 109 32 111 10 98 97 115 104 97 99 107 115 44 32 109 97 115 32 110 97 100 97 32 99 111 109 111 32 117 109 97 32 100 111 115 101 32 113 117 101 110 116 101 32 112 97 114 97 32 97 113 117 101 99 101 114 32 111 32 109 101 117 32 99 111 114 97 195 167 195 163 111 32 103 101 108 97 100 111 46 46 46