Base64

Introduction

This is a package that provide a command line tool to perform base 64 encoding and decoding.

The goal of this implementation is to be highly portable, and only require an ANSI C89 platform.

If you want help with using or adapting this implementation on a commercial basis, please contact me.

Base64 is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

How to use it

It is quite simple to use, if you are familiar with Unix tools in general. Examples are better than words:

jas@latte:~$ echo foo|base64|base64 --decode
foo
jas@latte:~$ base64 --quiet foo
Zm9v
      

What's new

• 2006-02-27: The base64 utility is part of GNU CoreUtils. It will not be maintained here anymore.
• 2005-06-25: Asked RMS to include it in the GNU Project, he suggested adding it to GNU CoreUtils instead. I posted the first patches for Coreutils.
• 2005-06-24: Version 1.3 released. License updated to reflect new FSF address.
• 2005-01-04: Version 1.2 released. Data can be given as a command line parameter. Documentation improvements, for example a man page was added. A Swedish translation was added. More self tests were added.
• 2004-12-28: Version 1.1 released. Fixes the -w/--wrap parameter.
• 2004-12-28: Version 1.0 released. Initial release, encoding and decoding is supported.

Download

Note! The latest version is now part of GNU CoreUtils. The releases below are for historical purposes.

The releases are distributed from release directory.

All releases are signed with an OpenPGP key with fingerprint 0xB565716F.

Development

Base64 is developed in CVS on a private machine. At irregular intervals, it is synchronized against a publicly available machine (just press enter at the password prompt):

$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@yxa.extundo.com:/home/cvs/public-cvs login
Logging in to :pserver:anoncvs@yxa.extundo.com:2401/home/cvs/public-cvs
CVS password:
$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@yxa.extundo.com:/home/cvs/public-cvs co base64
      

The online CVS repository is available.

Before each release, the package is built on many platforms. The latest results from the autobuilder is available.