[proc355]

ok i proofed this last night—there isn't much in it—but have been fiddling around with it trying to squeeze every last drop of speed out of it/minimise the footprint (don't ask me why, it just piqued my interest & i haven't been playing with any actual javascript lately)

anyway, can't seem to get better than this (golfed to death where line length is less than 80 chars)

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//	methods to [de]marshal alphanumeric [<]=> numeric string
//
//	A-Z !a-z  - if you need lcase you'll need another leading 0 et al...
//	...you're already doubling up on your storage doing this
//
//	all methods take & return a string
//	pad also takes the desired length
//

function pad(s,l){var p=s;var i=l-s.length;do{p='0'+s;}while(i--);return p;}

function marshal(s){
	var m='';
	var i=s.length-1;
	do{var c=s[i];m=(c.match(/[0-9]/)?'0'+c:c.charCodeAt(0))+m;}while(i--);
	return m;
}

function demarshal(s){
	var d='';	
	for (var i=s.length;i>-1;i-=2){
		var c=s[i]+s[i+1];
		d=(c[0]==0?c[1]:String.fromCharCode(c))+d;
	}
	return d;
}

// test

alert( marshal('12AB') );                      //-> 01026566
alert( demarshal( pad('1026566', 8) ) );       //-> 12AB
alert( marshal('FOOBAR69') );                  //-> 7079796665820609
alert( demarshal('7079796665820609') );	       //-> FOOBAR69

//
//
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////