On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:38:07 +0100 e-letter <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 17/06/2011, Bob Proulx <[email protected]> wrote: > > e-letter wrote: > >> I have tried to copy base64 encoded text from the clipboard (i.e. a > >> web mail message) to the command terminal: > >> > >> base64 -d 'xyz' > >> > >> where 'xyz' is the base64 text. According to the manual, standard > >> input can be accepted if a file is not accepted but instead the > >> terminal response is: > >> > >> base64: xyz: No such file or directory > >> > >> What is my mistake please? > > > > The base64 syntax is: > > > > base64 [OPTION]... [FILE] > > > > You have specified one option and what appears to the command to be > > one file. The -d fits in the [OPTION] spot and the xyz fits in the > > [FILE] spot. > > > > The brackets indicate that those parts are optional. For [OPTIONS] no > > options means to encode. Specifying -d means to decode. > > > > For [FILE] this means that if a file is specified then the command > > will open the file and read it. If no file is specified on the > > command line then it will read standard input. > > > >> The command: > >> 'echo xyz | base64 -d' > >> > >> returns: > >> �,base64: invalid input > >> > >> If the base64 text is saved as a file, conversion is successful. > > > > This is because "xyz" isn't valid base64 encoded data. It works > > successfully if you give it valid input data instead of random > > characters. See this example: > > > > I wrote 'xyz' not as literal, verbatim encoded text but as an example. > Repeating this as follows causes the same error: > > ...@localhost ~]$ base64 -d Zm9vCg== > base64: Zm9vCg==: No such file or directory Which part of base64 [OPTION]... [FILE] is not clear? -- D.
