Buffer.fromHex and Buffer.fromBase64 should return Buffer instances

[ChALkeR]

Those should either be removed from the Buffer API, or should return Buffers

Currently:

> Buffer.fromHex('00ff').toString()
'0,255'

Since 25

[mertcanaltin]

Removing this makes sense to me, because Buffer.from(string, 'hex') already does this

> Buffer.from("00ff", 'hex')
<Buffer 00 ff>
> 

[ChALkeR]

Those are not equivalent
Buffer.from('...', 'hex') is loose and is garbage-in-garbage-out, while Uint8Array.fromHex performs validation

> Buffer.from('abggcd00','hex')
<Buffer ab>
> Uint8Array.fromHex('abggcd00')
Uncaught SyntaxError: Input string must contain hex characters in even length
> 

Also, it's already shipped in 25.

[panva]

Removing these doesn't make sense as these APIs come from Buffer's superclass. Having them return a Buffer does make sense to me.

[mertcanaltin]

Thanks for answers, I thought this method did the same thing, I'll open an PR for identification.

[Renegade334]

My personal feeling is that these can just be left alone. These methods aren't part of the documented Buffer API, users aren't just going to stumble across them by accident, and we're not adding new functionality by overriding them, nor are they causing any particular harm by existing.

We don't override the prototypes of returned objects from non-species-aware ES2023 TypedArray methods (with, toReversed, etc.) either, and this doesn't seem to have caused any complaint.

[LiviaMedeiros]

We don't override the prototypes of returned objects from non-species-aware ES2023 TypedArray methods (with, toReversed, etc.) either, and this doesn't seem to have caused any complaint.

Nice catch. I think these should be fixed as well anyway, it's wrong to have buffer.subarray() and buffer.sort() returning Buffers while buffer.with() and buffer.toSorted() return Uint8Arrays for the same buffer.

[github-actions]

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