2015-08-31 14:39:57 +0100, Pádraig Brady: [...] > > The problem is that `base64' doesn't support the RFC 4648 > > standard. An obvious work around is to do something akin to > > "cat <file> | sed 's/-/+/' | sed 's|_|/|' | base64 --decode" > > or whatever (forgive the double sed please). However, it > > would be more GNU-y I think to support the "web" or > > "url-safe" version of Base64 encoding directly in the > > program as an extension. [...] > Generally we avoid adding functionality unless it gives > a functional advantage to include. That's not the case here > and even performance wise, base64 doesn't generally process > large amounts of data where the extra data copy would be significant. > > There's talk of adding base32 util, with which > it would be nice to keep the same args as base64, > and a --url option would be inappropriate there. [...]
Note that as per RFC 4648, that's a different encoding so if GNU's going to add another command for base32 encoding, another base64url one would be needed as well for base64url. Maybe GNU recode or iconv may be a better choice to add this kind of encoding functionality. recode already does base64 encoding as well as others like quoted-printable. $ echo test | base64 | recode /b64.. test -- Stephane
