otp_words(3trf)

💖 otp_words — the otp_words(3trf) era 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about a Tcl encoding and it's lowkey iconic. this is the otp_words(3trf) manual page, and yes, it's giving "niche but make it cute". 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

otp_words — encoding "otp_words", aka the one that speaks in english words like it's casting a spell. 🔮

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

package require Tcl  ?8.2?

package require Trf  ?2.1.3?

otp_words ?options...? ?data?

like, that's the whole summoning circle right there. no cap.

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

otp_words is one of several data encodings that the package trf brings to the party. if you want the whole tour of the package, go peek at trf-intro — it's the overview, the vibe-setter, the main character. 👑

so what does this one do? it takes every block of four bytes (64 bit) and transforms it into six english words, exactly as defined in RFC 2289 (that's over at http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2289.txt, if you wanna read the source material, which, respect).

⚠️ and here's the tea: this encoding is the sole one which is not able to handle an incomplete block at the end of the input. every other encoding can cope with leftovers. this one literally cannot. it's the pickiest one in the group chat. 💀

otp_words ?options...? ?data?

the options, let's go 💅

• -mode encode|decode — this option has to be present and is always understood by the encoding. for immediate mode the argument value tells you which operation to use. for an attached encoding it specifies the operation to use for writing, and reading will automatically use the reverse operation. (see the section IMMEDIATE versus ATTACHED for what those two terms even mean, bestie.) beyond the exact values listed above, all unique abbreviations are recognized too. Encode converts from arbitrary (most likely binary) data into the described representation, decode does the reverse . ✨
• -attach channel — the presence or absence of this option is literally the vibe check that determines the main operation mode of the transformation. if it's present, the transformation gets stacked onto the channel whose handle was given to the option and it runs in attached mode. more on that in the section IMMEDIATE versus ATTACHED. if it's absent, the transformation is used in immediate mode, and the options listed below are recognized. more on that in the section IMMEDIATE versus ATTACHED. 🫶
• -in channel — this option is legal if and only if the transformation is used in immediate mode. it hands over the handle of the channel that the data to transform has to be read from. if the transformation is in immediate mode and this option is absent, the data to transform is expected as the last argument to the transformation. 🍓
• -out channel — this option is legal if and only if the transformation is used in immediate mode. it hands over the handle of the channel that the generated transformation result gets written to. if the transformation is in immediate mode and this option is absent, the generated data is returned as the result of the command itself. 😌

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🦋 IMMEDIATE VERSUS ATTACHED 🦋

the transformation distinguishes between two main ways of using it, and honestly, choosing between them is a whole personality trait. these are the immediate and attached operation modes.

attached mode 💜

for the attached mode, the option -attach is used to associate the transformation with an existing channel. during the execution of the command, no transformation is performed — instead, the channel is changed in such a way that from then on, all data written to or read from it passes through the transformation and gets modified by it according to the definition above. the way that it just quietly rewires a channel? obsessed.

this attachment can be revoked by executing the command unstack for the chosen channel. and heads up: this is the only way to do this at the Tcl level. no shortcuts, no alternatives, periodt. 🙈

immediate mode ⭐

in the second mode — which you can detect by the absence of the option -attach — the transformation immediately takes data from either its commandline or a channel, transforms it, and returns the result either as the result of the command, or writes it into a channel. the mode is named after the immediate nature of its execution, like, it does not wait, it does not hesitate, it simply goes. 🔥

where the data is taken from and delivered to is governed by the presence and absence of the options -in and -out.

💀 and now for a lil history lesson: it should be noted that this ability to immediately read from and/or write to a channel is an historic artifact which was introduced at the beginning of Trf's life when Tcl version 7.6 was current, as this and earlier versions have trouble dealing with \0 characters embedded into either input or output. so it's not a feature, it's a survival mechanism. nostalgic fr fr.

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• ascii85
• base64
• bin
• hex
• md5_otp
• oct
• otp_words
• quoted-printable
• trf-intro
• uuencode

go read them all, they're all part of the fam. 💖

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👑 KEYWORDS 👑

• encoding
• md5_otp
• otp_words
• rfc 2289

iykyk. ✨

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💅 COPYRIGHT 💅

Copyright (c) 1996-2003, Andreas Kupries <andreas_kupries@users.sourceforge.net>

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this lil masterpiece comes to you from the Trf transformer commands, rocking version 2.1.3, and it's the otp_words(3trf) page. slay, stay encoded, and don't forget — four bytes in, six words out, and no incomplete blocks ever. bye bye 💖🦋🌸