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fix(ciphers): operate on raw bytes in base32 to fix corruption and empty encoding - #15643

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saiyam-jain-dev:fix-base32-raw-bytes
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saiyam-jain-dev wants to merge 1 commit into
TheAlgorithms:masterfrom
saiyam-jain-dev:fix-base32-raw-bytes

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Describe your change

  • Add an algorithm?
  • Fix a bug or typo in an existing algorithm?
  • Add or change doctests? -- Note: Please avoid changing both code and tests in a single pull request.
  • Documentation change?

RFC 4648 Base32 operates on binary byte streams. The previous implementation in ciphers/base32.py had several correctness issues:

  1. Encoding empty input �"" produced �"A=======" instead of �"".
  2. Decoding values with high-byte representations (such as �"74======", which corresponds to byte xff) crashed with UnicodeDecodeError or corrupted values because it decoded intermediate binary chunks as UTF-8 text strings (.decode("utf-8")) and operated on ord(chr).
  3. Non-ASCII binary payloads could not be round-tripped reliably.

This PR:

  • Refactors �ase32_encode and �ase32_decode to operate strictly on raw bytes and bit manipulation adhering to RFC 4648.
  • Produces identical results to Python standard library �ase64.b32encode and �ase64.b32decode.
  • Properly handles empty inputs, padding, and all 8-bit byte values.
  • Adds comprehensive doctests comparing against standard library implementations and RFC test vectors.

Checklist

  • I have read CONTRIBUTING.md.
  • This pull request is all my own work -- I have not plagiarized.
  • I know that pull requests will not be merged if they fail the automated tests.
  • This PR only changes one algorithm file. To ease review, please open separate PRs for separate algorithms.
  • All new Python files are placed inside an existing directory.
  • All filenames are in all lowercase characters with no spaces or dashes.
  • All functions and variable names follow Python naming conventions.
  • All function parameters and return values are annotated with Python type hints.
  • All functions have doctests that pass the automated testing.
  • All new algorithms include at least one URL that points to Wikipedia or another similar explanation.
  • If this pull request resolves one or more open issues, then the description above includes the issue number(s) with a closing keyword: "Fixes #ISSUE-NUMBER".

@algorithms-keeper algorithms-keeper Bot added awaiting reviews This PR is ready to be reviewed enhancement This PR modified some existing files labels Oct 26, 2026

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