#4 Feature Request

[James Coleman]

Hi,
crypt is a very useful idea, IMHO.
I like the concept of "in-place" encryption with the
filename staying the same.

There are a few details that I think could be improved.

1) It would be helpful if there was an
"ascii-armor"-option, like in PGP/GPG, meaning that the
encrypted file is coded base64. Then you can for
example send it as an email or include it in the text
of a webpage etc.

2) an automatic compression before encryption would be
really cool (GPG does that too)

3) this one is a bit annoying: 'crypt' will encrypt and
decrypt any file, without checking if it is already
encrypted. That can cause problems, for example if you
accidentally encrypt a file a second time. After that
you won't know if decryption fails because of wrong key
or because of accidental multiple encryption. This
leads to a high chance of data-loss.

4) similar subject: if you encrypt with, say key="xxx"
and then decrypt with key="yyy", 'crypt' will not
complain.
But of course you get garbage and you can easily get
mixed up with the keys and then terminally lose your
data. GPG explicitly differentiates between encryption
and decryption. Itwill decrypt only if you enter the
correct key AND if the file is encrypted. Plaintext
files will be left untouched.

regards, jc