should String.pad(32) right-pad or left-pad strings that aren't hex/numeric?

[cdetrio]

In the mutan example line if this.data[0] == "heartbeat" {, the "heartbeat" string is converted by mutan to a left-padded hex value. However, if the data argument is prepared in javascript like this:
var data = "heartbeat".pad(32).unbin();
the value sent with the transaction is right-padded, causing the mutan if conditional (opcode EQ in the debugger) to fail. A simple fix is to prepare a string data argument like this:
var data = "heartbeat".pad(32,0).unbin();
Is String.pad() acting correctly when the 2nd argument is missing?

[obscuren]

Functions removed in favour of fromAscii