Binary-to-text encoding formats

Base64 is a binary-to-text encoding that uses 64 printable characters to represent each 6-bit segment of a sequence of byte values. As for all binary-to-text encodings, Base64 encoding enables transmitting binary data on a communication channel that only supports text.

Percent-encoding, also known as URL encoding, is a method to encode arbitrary data in a uniform resource identifier (URI) using only the US-ASCII characters legal within a URI. Percent-encoding is used to ensure special characters do not interfere with the URI's structure and interpretation. Special characters are replaced with a percent sign (%) followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's byte value. For example, a space is commonly encoded as %20:

uuencoding is a form of binary-to-text encoding that originated in the Unix programs uuencode and uudecode written by Mary Ann Horton at the University of California, Berkeley in 1980, for encoding binary data for transmission in email systems.

file format for conveying binary information

file format

scheme for encoding arbitrary binary data as plain text

Ascii85, also called Base85, is a binary-to-text encoding developed by Paul E. Rutter for the btoa utility. By using five ASCII characters to represent four bytes of binary data (making the encoded size larger than the original, assuming eight bits per ASCII character), it is more efficient than uuencode or Base64, which use four characters to represent three bytes of data ( increase, assuming eight bits per ASCII character).

Base32 is binary-to-text encoding based on the base-32 numeral system. It uses an alphabet of 32 digits, each of which represents a different combination of 5 bits (25). Since base32 is not very widely adopted, the question of notation i.e. which characters to use to represent the 32 digits is not as settled as in the case of more well-known numeral systems (such as hexadecimal) even though RFCs and unofficial and de facto standards exist. One way to represent Base32 numbers in human-readable form is using digits 0–9 followed by the twenty-two upper-case letters A–V. However, many other variat

yEnc is a binary-to-text encoding scheme for transferring binary files in messages on Usenet or via e-mail. It reduces the overhead over previous US-ASCII-based encoding methods by using an 8-bit encoding method. yEnc's overhead is often (if each byte value appears approximately with the same frequency on average) as little as 1–2%, compared to 33–40% overhead for 6-bit encoding methods like uuencode and Base64. yEnc was initially developed by Jürgen Helbing, and its first release was early 2001. By 2003 yEnc became the de facto standard encoding system for binary files on Usenet. The name yEn

BinHex, originally short for "binary-to-hexadecimal", is a binary-to-text encoding system which was used on the classic Mac OS for sending binary files over email. BinHexed files take up more space than the original files, but avoid data corruption by software that is not 8-bit clean.