tooldura blog
Guides, Tips & Tool Tutorials
In-depth articles on text tools, SEO, developer utilities, and productivity.
Written by the tooldura team. No fluff, no filler.
Choosing a Business Name: Six Shapes and What Each One Costs
Almost every company name is one of six shapes. What each costs in spelling, memorability and domain availability, and the tests that thin a shortlist.
Signing a JWT: Which Algorithm, and How Long the Key Has to Be
HS256 hands every verifier the power to forge. RS256 does not. And the 32-byte minimum in RFC 7518 is the line between a signature and a formality.
HTML Entities: Five Characters, and Why Escaping Depends on Context
Only five characters truly need escaping, and doing it is not enough on its own. Where each context needs its own rule, and how double encoding announces itself.
The Right-Hand Side: What You Can Write in a Regex Replacement
Everything after the pattern gets one sentence in most tutorials, and that is where the mistakes live. $1 versus \1, groups that move, and the ceiling.
How Diff Works: The Algorithm That Decides What Changed
Myers walks a grid one edit at a time, and Git has run it since 1986. Why the shortest diff is not always the clearest, and what makes one look wrong.
Why Character Counts Disagree: Emoji, Accents and SMS Segments
One emoji can cost seven characters, and a single curly apostrophe can triple your SMS bill. The three definitions of a character, and when each applies.
camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case: Which Case Goes Where
The convention each language expects, the one language where capitalisation changes behaviour, and why acronyms break every rule.
Base64 Is Not Encryption: What It Does and Why It Exists
Three bytes become four characters, which is where the 33 percent size increase and the trailing equals signs come from. And why it hides nothing.
SHA-256 Explained: What Hashes Guarantee and What They Do Not
Three properties make a hash cryptographic, and each one supports a different use. Why SHA-256 is the wrong tool for storing passwords.