README.md

   1 # base1
   2
   3 Reimplementation of [ferno][1]'s [`base1`][2] in C for UNIXoid shells.
   4
   5 ## Why
   6  * Why not?
   7  * guaranteed to be compatible with __any__ character set, no matter how small
   8    (theoretically)
   9
  10 ## Building
  11 To generate the binary, run `make`. Then, copy the resulting `base1` binary to
  12 a directory in your `$PATH`.
  13
  14 ## Usage
  15 `base1` uses GNU's [`base64`][4] tool as a reference and therefore has similar
  16 command line arguments. This means, you can either pipe data in or give a file
  17 as an argument.
  18
  19 The non-standard parameter `-t` will return the length of the string to be
  20 encoded, or warn if it will overflow.
  21
  22 ### 'Hello World'-Example:
  23 Can't do: even on 64 bit machines the length of the resulting string will be
  24 larger than `unsigned long long int`. I en- and decoded the string `Hallo` - it
  25 took 52 **minutes**!
  26
  27     echo -n "Hi" | ./base1 -w 0
  28
  29 will output 18794 `A`s.
  30
  31 ## License
  32 `base1` is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3.
  33 See `LICENSE` for details.
  34 &copy; 2016 Tobias Girstmair, [isticktoit.net][5]
  35
  36 ## In other Languages
  37  * [JavaScript](https://github.com/ferno/base1)
  38
  39 [1]: https://github.com/ferno/
  40 [2]: https://github.com/ferno/base1
  41 [3]: https://twitter.com/girstmair
  42 [4]: http://linux.die.net/man/1/base64
  43 [5]: http://isticktoit.net/