> Not really pointless. I was referring to the full 255 chars > representable by single bytes (8-bit ASCII), not 7-bit. Or are you > saying that 8-bit is not strictly ASCII?
ASCII is only defines the mapping between the first 128 (or so) integers and some common characters. This only needs 7 bits to be represented so when sent in octets (8-bit bytes), only the lower 7 bits will be used. A mapping from ASCII to 6 bits would therefore imply that there are 7 bits mapped to 6 bits which isn't true in Base64. "8-bit ASCII" is a confusing term with no clear meaning so you shouldn't use it. Talk about octets or bytes instead (since bytes almost always are 8 bits nowadays) /Daniel
