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BASE64(1)              DragonFly General Commands Manual             BASE64(1)

NAME
       base64 - encode / decode binary file as RFC 1341 MIME base64

SYNOPSIS
       base64 -d|-e [ -n ] [ -u ] [ infile [ outfile ] ]

DESCRIPTION
       The MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification (RFC
       1341 and successors) defines a mechanism for encoding arbitrary binary
       information for transmission by electronic mail.  Triplets of 8-bit
       octets are encoded as groups of four characters, each representing 6
       bits of the source 24 bits.  Only characters present in all variants of
       ASCII and EBCDIC are used, avoiding incompatibilities in other forms of
       encoding such as uuencode/uudecode.

       base64 is a command line utility which encodes and decodes files in
       this format.  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.

OPTIONS
       --copyright Print program copyright information.

       -d, --decode
                   Decodes the input, previously created by base64, to recover
                   the original input file.

       -e, --encode
                   Encodes the input into an output text file containing its
                   base64 encoding.

       -n, --noerrcheck
                   Suppress error checking when decoding.  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 -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.

       -u, --help  Print how-to-call information.

       --version   Print program version information.

EXIT STATUS
       base64 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.

FILES
       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.  The input and output are
       processed strictly serially; consequently base64 may be used in
       pipelines.

BUGS
       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.  This is inherent in the design of base64, which
       assumes transmission integrity is the responsibility of a higher-level
       protocol.

       Please report bugs and documentation errors to bugs@fourmilab.ch.

SEE ALSO
       uudecode(1), uuencode(1), RFC1341

AUTHOR
            John Walker
            http://www.fourmilab.ch/

       This software is in the public domain.  Permission to use, copy,
       modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any
       purpose and without fee is hereby granted, without any conditions or
       restrictions.  This software is provided ``as is'' without express or
       implied warranty.

       This is version 1.4 of base64.  The current version of this program may
       be downloaded from http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64.

4th Berkeley Distribution         20 FEB 2001                        BASE64(1)