doc: explain hex encoding in Buffer API

fixes: #29786 refs: #29792 refs: #24491 PR-URL: #31352 Fixes: #29786 Refs: #29792 Refs: #24491 Reviewed-By: Anna Henningsen <[email protected]> Reviewed-By: Rich Trott <[email protected]>
nodejs · Feb 17, 2020 · 6055134 · 6055134
1 parent 6833f62
commit 6055134
Showing 1 changed file with 14 additions and 1 deletion.
diff --git a/doc/api/buffer.md b/doc/api/buffer.md
@@ -203,7 +203,20 @@ The character encodings currently supported by Node.js include:
 
 * `'binary'`: Alias for `'latin1'`.
 
-* `'hex'`: Encode each byte as two hexadecimal characters.
+* `'hex'`: Encode each byte as two hexadecimal characters. Data truncation
+  may occur for unsanitized input. For example:
+
+```js
+Buffer.from('1ag', 'hex');
+// Prints <Buffer 1a>, data truncated when first non-hexadecimal value
+// ('g') encountered.
+
+Buffer.from('1a7g', 'hex');
+// Prints <Buffer 1a>, data truncated when data ends in single digit ('7').
+
+Buffer.from('1634', 'hex');
+// Prints <Buffer 16 34>, all data represented.
+```
 
 Modern Web browsers follow the [WHATWG Encoding Standard][] which aliases
 both `'latin1'` and `'ISO-8859-1'` to `'win-1252'`. This means that while doing