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BASENC

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: June 2025
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NAME

basenc - Encode/decode data and print to standard output  

SYNOPSIS

basenc [,OPTION/]... [,FILE/]  

DESCRIPTION

basenc encode or decode FILE, or standard input, to standard output.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

--base64
same as 'base64' program (RFC4648 section 4)
--base64url
file- and url-safe base64 (RFC4648 section 5)
--base32
same as 'base32' program (RFC4648 section 6)
--base32hex
extended hex alphabet base32 (RFC4648 section 7)
--base16
hex encoding (RFC4648 section 8)
--base2msbf
bit string with most significant bit (msb) first
--base2lsbf
bit string with least significant bit (lsb) first
-d, --decode
decode data
-i, --ignore-garbage
when decoding, ignore non-alphabet characters
-w, --wrap=,COLS/
wrap encoded lines after COLS character (default 76). Use 0 to disable line wrapping
--z85
ascii85-like encoding (ZeroMQ spec:32/Z85); when encoding, input length must be a multiple of 4; when decoding, input length must be a multiple of 5
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit

When decoding, the input may contain newlines in addition to the bytes of the formal alphabet. Use --ignore-garbage to attempt to recover from any other non-alphabet bytes in the encoded stream.  

ENCODING EXAMPLES

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base64
/k+C

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base64url
_k-C

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base32
7ZHYE===

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base32hex
VP7O4===

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base16
FE4F82

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base2lsbf
011111111111001001000001

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base2msbf
111111100100111110000010

$ printf '\376\117\202\000' | basenc --z85
@.FaC
 

AUTHOR

Written by Simon Josefsson and Assaf Gordon.  

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>  

SEE ALSO

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/basenc>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) basenc invocation'


Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
ENCODING EXAMPLES
AUTHOR
REPORTING BUGS
SEE ALSO
This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 11:48:40 GMT, September 14, 2026