#BASE64 ENCODING FROM COMMAND LINE HOW TO#

This is inherent in the design of base64, which assumes transmission integrity is the responsibility of a higher-level protocol. Little or no error checking is done when decoding, other than validating that the input consists of a multiple of four characters in the encoding set. The input and output are processed strictly serially consequently base64 may be used in pipelines. If no infile is specified or infile is a single “-”, base64 reads from standard input if no outfile is given, or outfile is a single “-”, output is sent to standard output. Print program version information.EXIT STATUSīase64 returns status 0 if processing was completed without errors, 1 if an I/O error occurred or errors were detected in decoding a file which indicate it is incorrect or incomplete, and 2 if processing could not be performed at all due, for example, to a nonexistent input file.

#BASE64 ENCODING FROM COMMAND LINE HOW TO#

Print how to call information and a summary of options. The -n option suppresses even this rudimentary error checking invalid characters are silently ignored and the output truncated to the last three valid octets if the input is incorrectly padded. A total of 64 characters are used to encode the data into a string containing those symbols. By default, upon encountering a non white space character which does not belong to the base64 set, or discovering the input file is incorrectly padded to a multiple of four characters, base64 issues an error message and terminates processing with exit status 1. The base64 encoding uses a symbol table of 64 characters that includes A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /. It can be used within a pipeline as an encoding or decoding filter, and is most commonly used in this manner as part of an automated mail processing system.ĭecodes the input, previously created by base64, to recover the original input file.Įncodes the input into an output text file containing its base64 encoding. After you enter the clear-text string, press Control-D to signal the end of input on the command line. For, view the content of the encoded file, we can. Only characters present in all variants of ASCII and EBCDIC are used, avoiding incompatibilities in other forms of encoding such as uuencode/uudecode.īase64 is a command line utility which encodes and decodes files in this format. The following command encodes and decodes on Linux from the command-line. This command will encode the text in the string using base64 and print the encoded text to standard output. Triplets of 8-bit octets are encoded as groups of four characters, each representing 6 bits of the source 24 bits. The MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification (RFC 1341 and successors) defines a mechanism for encoding arbitrary binary information for transmission by electronic mail. This command will decode the base64 encoded text file and print the original text on standard output. encodes binary files in the “ Base64” format used by MIME-encoded documents such as electronic mail messages with embedded images and audio files.īase64 - encode and decode base64 files SYNOPSISīase64 DESCRIPTION

Base64 encoding from command line