LoginSign Up
← Back to all sparks
S

secretbase

DEVOPS
Velocity0.0

Cryptographic Hash Functions and Data Encoding

github.com/shikokuchuo/secretbase ↗

secretbase quietly grew from a hashing package into a serialization toolkit

hashingrserializationcborencodingdependency-free
◆Current state
secretbase provides SHA-3, SHAKE, BLAKE3 and related hashing in R with a small C footprint and no dependencies. Over 2026 it has accumulated a second identity: CBOR, base58, JSON and URL-safe base64 encoders and decoders now sit alongside the hash functions. Releases are frequent, short and each does one thing — a format added, a conversion sped up, an undefined-behaviour warning cleared.
◆Where it's heading
The additions are not arbitrary. CBOR is a binary format for structured data, JSON its text counterpart, base58 the checksummed encoding used for identifiers — together they cover what a process needs to put an R object on a wire and get it back, which is a different job from digesting bytes. The maintainer also maintains R's high-performance messaging stack, and a dependency-free codec that handles integers, floats, strings, raw vectors and lists is exactly what that stack would consume.
◆Prediction
Every format added so far has come with an RFC number and a minimal implementation rather than a wrapped library, so further additions are likely to follow the same pattern; the encoders are also being optimized after they land, suggesting performance passes on CBOR and JSON before anything new.

◆Recent moves

  1. 2mo ago

    secretbase 1.3.0

    base64enc() and base64dec() gain a url argument for the RFC 4648 section 5 variant — the - and _ alphabet without padding. Small, but it is the encoding required anywhere base64 output lands in a URL path or filename, which the standard alphabet cannot safely do.

    View source ↗
  2. 3mo ago

    secretbase 1.2.2

    Faster hex conversion for hash output and UTF-8 tagging on jsondec() strings per RFC 8259. Follow-up polish on the formats added earlier in the year.

    View source ↗
  3. 4mo ago

    secretbase 1.2.1

    Undefined behaviour fixed as flagged by GCC 16. Compilation hygiene, no user-visible effect.

    View source ↗
  4. 6mo ago

    secretbase 1.2.0

    jsonenc() and jsondec() arrive as a minimal JSON implementation, giving the package a text counterpart to the CBOR support added the month before. Another dependency-free codec rather than a wrapper.

    View source ↗
  5. 7mo ago

    secretbase 1.1.1

    CBOR performance work plus a semantic fix — scalar values carrying attributes now encode as scalars rather than arrays. A correctness detail that matters for anything reading the output in another language.

    View source ↗
  6. 7mo ago

    secretbase 1.1.0 adds CBOR, turning a hash package into a codec

    ⚡ SPARK

    The release that changes what secretbase is for. CBOR encoding handles structured R data — integers, floats, strings, raw vectors, lists — which is a different job from digesting bytes, and everything added since has extended that second role rather than the hashing one.

    View source ↗