base85

base85

Simple utility to manage base85. Where base64 adds approximately 1/3, base85 only adds about 1/4. Of course there's a tradeoff. The Base85 alphabet includes characters that might not be as friendly as the base64 alphabet. While it's still only printable characters (ASCII 33 '!' to ASCII 117 'u'), it contains quotes, both ' and " and other characters which might appear problematic in some applications.

Installation

npm install base85

Usage

For encoding:

var base85 = require('base85');
console.log(base85.encode('Hello, world!'));

Output: <~87cURD_*#TDfTZ)+T~>

For decoding:

var base85 = require('base85');
var decoded = base85.decode('<~@;Ka&GAhM;+CT.u+Du*?E,8s.+DkP&ATJu/@:O\'q@3B*\'Cht5\'Dg;~>');
console.log(decoded.toString('ascii'));

Output: all work and no play makes jack a dull boy

Bugs

Doesn't support the z-abbreviation as for now.

API

encode(data)

Encodes the specified data. The encoded data will be prepended with <~ and appended with ~>. This is actually following Adobes version which seems to be the common practice for base85.

data The data to encode, may be a String or a Buffer.

returns A String with the encoded data.

decode(data)

Decodes the specified data. The data is expected to start with <~ and and end with ~>. No checks are actually made for this, but output will be unexpected if this is not the case.

A buffer is always returned as data may not be representable in a string. If you know it is, you can easily convert it to a string using the Buffer.toString() utility.

data The data to decode. May be a String or a Buffer. Expected to be enclosed in <~ and ~>.

returns A Buffer With the decoded data.