behaviour of Buffer.from(string[, encoding]) is not specified for invalid input

[safareli]

for example

➜  node
> Buffer.from("LOL", "hex")
<Buffer >
> Buffer.from("LOL#$%^&*(", "hex")
<Buffer >
> Buffer.byteLength("LOL#$%^&*(", "hex")
5
> Buffer.byteLength("0x8", "hex")
1
> Buffer.from("0x8", "hex")
<Buffer >
> Buffer.from("qqq0x8123132", "hex")
<Buffer >
> Buffer.from("110x8123132", "hex")
<Buffer 11>
> Buffer.from("1_-10x8123132", "hex")
<Buffer >

In general Buffer.from returns trash if input string is is not valid, and it could be a source if error/bugs. in node v7 this it was throwing TypeError: Invalid hex string but now it isn't.

• Version:
  v8.12.0
• Platform:
  Darwin Iraklis-MacBook-Pro-2.local 18.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.0.0: Wed Aug 22 20:13:40 PDT 2018; root:xnu-4903.201.2~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Related to #8569 but it's not a feature request it's a bug report as I consider this to be a bug and instead of adding safeFrom this default one should be safe and if people need there should be unsafeFrom.

[bnoordhuis]

See #3770 for rationale. Summary: the validation for 'hex' was only partial and inconsistently applied at that, so it was removed.

For example, Buffer.from('xx', 'hex') doesn't throw an exception in v7.x, it returns an empty buffer.

[bnoordhuis]

Forgot to mention, changing the current behavior might have backwards compatibility implications.

Node.js has always^* accepted Buffer.from('abcdefGH', 'hex') and produced a meaningful result (a three byte buffer containing AB CD EF) so it's quite possible programs or libraries exist that depend on that behavior.

^* I'm fairly sure it goes back all the way to Node.js v0.1 or v0.2.

[mohd-akram]

This is kinda insane tbh. Can this breaking change be done in Node.js 18 then?

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

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