This package contains a base64 encoder/decoder and a quoted-printable encoder/decoder. These encoding methods are specified in RFC 2045 - MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). The Base64 encoding is designed to represent arbitrary sequences of octets in a form that need not be humanly readable. A 65-character subset ([A-Za-z0-9+/=]) of US-ASCII is used, enabling 6 bits to be represented per printable character. The quoted-printable encoding is intended to represent data that largely consists of bytes that correspond to printable characters in the ASCII character set. Non-printable characters are represented by a triplet consisting of the character "=" followed by two hexadecimal digits. In order to install and use this package you will need Perl version 5.005 or better. Installation as usual: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install The library can also be installed without XS support (for instance because you don't have a working C compiler installed). Simply remove the Base64.xs file before running 'perl Makefile.PL' and everything should work the same, although encoding and decoding will be much slower. Copyright 1995-1999,2001-2003 Gisle Aas This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.