René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"XOF hash function changed their default outputLength to zero byte","articleBody":"### Version\n\nv22.14.0\n\n### Platform\n\n```text\nLinux ### 6.15.2-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 10 Jun 2025 21:32:33 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux\n```\n\n### Subsystem\n\ncrypto\n\n### What steps will reproduce the bug?\n\nTry to hash anything using a variable length hash function (e.g. shake128), without any options you get an empty buffer/string.\n\n### How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?\n\nReproducible, but I haven't dissected the exact version the default changed. I known it is somewhere between v14.21.3 and v22.14.0 and yes I realize this is a very large window 😕 \n\n### What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?\n\nshake128 should default to outputLength = 16 as in earlier Node.JS versions. Other variable-length (XOF) hashes should also default to sensible non-zero length.\n\nI believe it is sane to expect the following assertion:\n```js\nconst {getHashes, createHash } = require('crypto');\nassert.equal( 0 , getHashes().filter( h =\u003e !createHash(h).digest().length ).length )\n```\n\n### What do you see instead?\n\n```js\ngetHashes().filter( h =\u003e !createHash(h).digest().length ) == [ 'shake128', 'shake256' ]\n```\n\n### Additional information\n\n- Node 12.8.0 introduced the `outputLength` option to `crypto.createHash`\n- In Node 14.21.3 and earlier, when the option is omitted, shake128 defaults to 16 bytes output\n- In Node 22.14.0 and later, the default is zero, which results in empty hashes:\n\n```js\n\u003e require('crypto').createHash('shake128').update('test').digest()\n\u003cBuffer \u003e\n```\n\nThere are two issues here:\n- It is not backward compatible, and unless I missed something this breaking change is not documented, which resulted in breaking our app when upgrading node\n- In general, defaulting to null length by default is very countrer-intuitive","author":{"url":"https://github.com/antoinep92","@type":"Person","name":"antoinep92"},"datePublished":"2025-07-01T11:12:02.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":4},"url":"https://github.com/58913/node/issues/58913"}