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Why everything converted to Base64 has a newline at the end? It isn't one of base characters, is it?

Style[
 b64 = ExportString["some pig", "Base64"],
 ShowStringCharacters -> True
 ]

"c29tZSBwaWc=\n"

Moreover, it seems that it doesn't matter if you drop it or not:

ImportString[#, "Base64"] & /@ {b64, StringDrop[b64, -1]}

{"some pig", "some pig"}

But it may matter in general.

Related chat discussion.

Using SO js example. Try in console

> btoa("some pig")

< "c29tZSBwaWc="

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  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Style[b64 = ExportString["some pig", "UUE"], ShowStringCharacters -> True] also does add some extra \n. $\endgroup$
    – Karsten7
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 9:47
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe it's an Encoding Formats thing. Did you check the official Base64 standard recommendations? $\endgroup$
    – Karsten7
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 10:27
  • $\begingroup$ This silly image shows an annoyance that maybe was intended to be avoided, but it is probably irrelevant :P. $\endgroup$
    – Jacob Akkerboom
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 11:20
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ From wiki: "most implementations use a CR/LF newline pair to delimit encoded lines" $\endgroup$
    – Jacob Akkerboom
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 11:47
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    $\begingroup$ I think that short string is to be interpreted as the last encoded line. It may be convenient to be able to assume that all lines are delimited by newlines. $\endgroup$
    – Michael E2
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 13:52

1 Answer 1

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It won't happen only at the end of the encoding but rather every 76 characters resulting from the encoding.

For many old programs that couldn't handle reading long lines, introducing a newline character was introduced every certain number of characters. In computer science argot this is called text wrapping. I guess that the number 76 of characters comes from the good practice of having code lines of at most 80 characters and having 2 per side as margin (although not sure why exactly two). This choose of 76 characters (or columns) comes from the standards in RFC2045 (page 19 paragraph 5) and is also a standard in the Linux command base64.

Nevertheless, there should be an option to change this default of 76 characters and I couldn't find it anywhere.

Base 64 encoding

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  • $\begingroup$ So it doesn't seem that 76 characters wide line is related to the new line at the end of base64 string. $\endgroup$
    – Kuba
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 8:34
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, you meant just at the end? Well, I'd guess that it's meant to keep the maximum of 76 even when you concatenate two encodings. $\endgroup$
    – Carlos Chida
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 8:38
  • $\begingroup$ That could be a valid reason but then I suppose this end new line should be there for every ExportString type. $\endgroup$
    – Kuba
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 8:39
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    $\begingroup$ I think it's not a margin of 2 characters at each side but rather 4 at the beginning and none at the end. This is so that you can fit your line-numbered Fortran code onto a punched card. I find this standard very sensible and useful because it helps to remind us of the arbitrary technical limitations of equipment that ceased to be used 40 years ago. $\endgroup$
    – Oleksandr R.
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 14:21
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    $\begingroup$ for the record , punch cards were long gone by the time base64 was developed. It was about 7bit clean transport via plain text email. $\endgroup$
    – george2079
    Commented Jan 25, 2018 at 14:37

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