MIME::Base64 3.07

MIME::Base64 is an encoding and decoding of base64 strings.

SYNOPSIS

use MIME::Base64;

$encoded = encode_base64(Aladdin:open sesame);
$decoded = decode_base64($encoded);

This module provides functions to encode and decode strings into and from 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($str)
encode_base64($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 $eol unless it is empty. Pass an empty string as second argument if you do not want the encoded string to be broken into lines.
decode_base64($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 65-character base64 subset is silently ignored. Characters occurring after a = padding character are never decoded.

If the length of the string to decode, after ignoring non-base64 chars, is not a multiple of 4 or if padding occurs too early, then a warning is generated if perl is running under -w.

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);