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Should not use ASCII NUL to pad between string array elements. #454

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attipaci opened this issue Jun 22, 2023 · 1 comment
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Should not use ASCII NUL to pad between string array elements. #454

attipaci opened this issue Jun 22, 2023 · 1 comment
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breaking-potential Alters functionality in ways that may break prior application. standard Improved compliance to FITS standard
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attipaci commented Jun 22, 2023

The FITS standard is quite clear that an ASCII array column (rA type) is undefined after the FITS ASCII NUL (0x00) byte. Prior to 1.18, we however padded string array components (substrings in the column) with that value, which violates the standard. According to a strict reading of the standard, this rendered everything after the first string component invalid. We should therefore switch to padding string array elements with blank space (ASCII 0x20), since trailing spaces are anyway considered insignificant, and are stripped by most (if not all) tools, including earlier versions of us.

This issue is resolved in PR #442

@attipaci attipaci self-assigned this Jun 22, 2023
@attipaci attipaci added breaking-potential Alters functionality in ways that may break prior application. standard Improved compliance to FITS standard labels Jun 22, 2023
@attipaci attipaci added this to the 1.18.0 milestone Jun 22, 2023
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attipaci commented Jul 5, 2023

Merged with PR #442.

@attipaci attipaci closed this as completed Jul 5, 2023
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