Base64 in Perl - ETOOBUSY

TL;DR

If you need to deal with Base64 with Perl…

In a previous post we looked at Base64, an encoding mechanism that allows to transform generic binary data into a restricted set of ASCII characters. What if you don’t have base64 but you have Perl instead?

Use MIME::Base64!

Encode with encode_base64 (imported automatically):

$ printf 'whatevah!' | base64
d2hhdGV2YWgh
$ printf 'whatevah!' \
    | perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'local $/; print encode_base64(<>)'
d2hhdGV2YWgh

Decode with decode_base64 (again, imported automatically):

$ printf 'd2hhdGV2YWgh' | base64 -d ; echo
whatevah!
$ printf 'd2hhdGV2YWgh' \
    | perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'local $/; print decode_base64(<>)' ; echo
whatevah!

Just like base64, MIME::Base64 will break long output encoded lines with newlines. This can be seen with a longer input:

$ perl -e 'print "whatevah!" x 10' | base64
d2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hh
dGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWgh
$ perl -e 'print "whatevah!" x 10' \
    | perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'local $/; print encode_base64(<>)'
d2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hh
dGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWgh

If you just want a single uninterrupted string, just pass a second parameter with the separator (e.g. the empty string):

$ perl -e 'print "whatevah!" x 10' | base64 -w 0 ; echo
d2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWgh
$ perl -e 'print "whatevah!" x 10' \
    | perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'local $/; print encode_base64(<>, "")' ; echo
d2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWghd2hhdGV2YWgh

This is pretty much it!

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