[TCLCORE] Rationale for non-strict [binary decode]

[Alexandre F. <ale...@gm...>]

Hi,

While looking at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2380293&group_id=10894&atid=110894
I discovered that [binary decode], for all three supported encodings
(hex, base64 and uuencode), had a "-strict" option, meaning the
default was non-strict: characters outside the expected range are just
ignored.

Question: what is the rationale for such "robustness" ?
Is there a known perturbation process that is modelled this way, which
would insert exclusively out-of-range chars ?

Otherwise, it seems _very_ dangerous to ignore such errors (an
insertion/deletion in any of the three schemes, especially the two
6bit-based, has catastrophic long-range effects).
Moreover, in situations where such a "controlled perturbation" is
expected, it is trivial for the programmer to apply a [regsub] first,
to filter out the offending characters.

What about removing the non-strict pathway entirely ?

-Alex