Win32 I/O character encoding part 2: chcp 65001

In a previous post, I summarized the character encodings used by Windows console mode programs. This is a short post about a not-very-good mitigation technique for some of the resulting problems. In a future post, I’ll go over some better solutions. Sometimes on an internet forum, someone will complain about a third-party Windows console program……

Examining the SHA-1 collision files

SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash function. You give it a computer file, and it produces a 160-bit hash that is completely determined by the input file, but not in any obvious way. In early 2017, a group of researchers, using advanced mathematics and 6500 CPU-years of computer searching, found the first ever SHA-1 collision: two……

How long does it take to fall through a ball of ice?

Planet FrictionlessIceball has a straight, narrow tunnel connecting two points on its surface. How long does it take to slide through the tunnel? Simplifying assumptions As with most story problems, we have to make some simplifying assumptions. But I think they’re fairly reasonable. We assume the faller starts out motionless, at one end of the……

About that JPEG/ZIP/Shakespeare hybrid file

The other day, a Twitter user (David Buchanan, @David3141593) posted a message that gained some attention. It has an attached JPEG file, with an image of William Shakespeare. If you save a copy of the JPEG file, and unzip it as if it were a ZIP file, it unzips into the complete works of Shakespeare.……

How is a JPEG image’s color type determined?

In order to decode and display a JPEG image, you have to know what “color type” (or “color model”) it uses. There are several possibilities that your software probably ought to handle: Grayscale YCbCr (transformed from RGB) RGB YCCK (transformed from CMYK) CMYK Unfortunately, if you look at all the bits and bytes that make……

Large prime numbers

As of this writing, the largest known prime number is 277232917-1. “Not large enough!”, I say. Let’s write a computer program that will print out a larger prime number. No, not a program that will take billions of years to run. It should take only a few minutes. There is a small catch. Hardly worth……

Summary of some Win32 I/O character encoding behavior

This post is about programming a Windows Win32 application, mainly one that uses the console (command line). It summarizes the results of some tests I performed. Maybe you ported a Unix utility to Windows, but you find that it doesn’t work with filenames that contain Japanese characters. This information may help, though specific recommendations will……