penland365 / b

b 64 / 32 / 16 transcoding CLI tool

b - Base 64 / 32 / 16 transcoding CLI tool

A strict implementation of the latest RFC 4648 - The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings

tl;dr

$ b 64 encode "foobar"
Zm9vYmFy

Why?

The common tool used for base64 encoding off the command line is the venerable base64. As the man page for that tool states:

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

This leads to two points:

1. RFC 1341 has been obsolted multiple times, though the implementation is most likely still valid.
2. MIME base64 encoding utilizes a different alphabet then the modern base64 RFC.

OK, but why are you care-mad?

I once lost 20 hours of my life because base64 provided an encoded b64 string that did not maintain fidelity when Kubernetes decoded it.