Re: Extensions to the `base64' Program

[Ray Dillinger]

On 08/31/2015 06:39 AM, Pádraig Brady wrote:

>   There are probably other variants of base64 in use
>   (like also transforming the '=' padding char for
>   easier to read URLs), and so using the external tr
>   solution is more general.

FYI, Base58, base64, and hexadecimal are fairly common ways to
express cryptographic keys, and there is no available command
line tool to transcode hex or base64 to and from base58.

Base58 is also used in encoding short URLs.

Base58 is essentially base64 restricted to alphanumerics
(hence by default compatible with URLs, double-click selection,
command lines that shells won't parse to something unexpected,
etc) minus characters which could easily be visually confused.

At present there are three incompatible but semi-standard
versions of it. Here's a handy URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58

Would coreutils like a command-line tool to do this?

                                Bear

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