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What are the advantages of base64 encoding over other encoding schemes?


Asked by Kristopher Copeland on Dec 03, 2021 FAQ



Base64 encode your data without hassles or decode it into a human-readable format. Base64 encoding schemes are commonly used when there is a need to encode binary data, especially when that data needs to be stored and transferred over media that are designed to deal with text.
In this manner,
From wiki: “Base64 encoding schemes are commonly used when there is a need to encode binary data that needs be stored and transferred over media that are designed to deal with textual data. This is to ensure that the data remains intact without modification during transport”.
Indeed, Base64 encoding encodes binary data as values that can only be interpreted as text in textual media, and is free of any special characters and/or control characters, so that the data will be preserved across textual media as well.
Thereof,
The disadvantage is that encoding the message using Base64 increases its length - every 3 bytes of data is encoded to 4 ASCII characters.
Besides,
Base64 was originally devised as a way to allow binary data to be attached to emails as a part of the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Media that is designed for textual data is of course eventually binary as well, but textual media often use certain binary values for control characters.