Base64
Section: User Contributed Perl Documentation
(3)
Updated: perl 5.004, patch 55
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NAME
MIME::Base64 - Encoding and decoding of base64 strings
SYNOPSIS
use MIME::Base64;
$encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');
$decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
DESCRIPTION
This module provides functions to encode and decode strings into the
Base64 encoding specified in RFC 2045 - MIME (Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions). The Base64 encoding is designed to represent
arbitrary sequences of octets in a form that need not be humanly
readable. A 65-character subset ([A-Za-z0-9+/=]) of US-ASCII is used,
enabling 6 bits to be represented per printable character.
The following functions are provided:
- encode_base64($str, [$eol])
-
Encode data by calling the encode_base64() function. The first
argument is the string to encode. The second argument is the line
ending sequence to use (it is optional and defaults to "\n"). The
returned encoded string is broken into lines of no more than 76
characters each and it will end with $eol unless it is empty. Pass an
empty string as second argument if you do not want the encoded string
broken into lines.
- decode_base64($str)
-
Decode a base64 string by calling the decode_base64() function. This
function takes a single argument which is the string to decode and
returns the decoded data. Any character not part of the legal base64
chars is ignored.
If you prefer not to import these routines into your namespace you can
call them as:
use MIME::Base64 ();
$encoded = MIME::Base64::encode($decoded);
$decoded = MIME::Base64::decode($encoded);
EXAMPLES
If you want to encode a large file, you should encode it in chunks
that are a multiple of 57 bytes. This ensures that the base64 lines
line up and that you do not end up with padding in the middle. 57
bytes of data fills one complete base64 line (76 == 57*4/3):
use MIME::Base64 qw(encode_base64);
open(FILE, "/var/log/wtmp") or die "$!";
while (read(FILE, $buf, 60*57)) {
print encode_base64($buf);
}
or if you know you have enough memory
use MIME::Base64 qw(encode_base64);
local($/) = undef; # slurp
print encode_base64(<STDIN>);
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1995-1997 Gisle Aas.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Distantly based on LWP::Base64 written by Martijn Koster
<m.koster@nexor.co.uk> and Joerg Reichelt <j.reichelt@nexor.co.uk> and
code posted to comp.lang.perl <3pd2lp$6gf@wsinti07.win.tue.nl> by Hans
Mulder <hansm@wsinti07.win.tue.nl>
The XS implementation use code from metamail. Copyright 1991 Bell
Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore)
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- COPYRIGHT
-
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Time: 23:58:14 GMT, February 15, 2023