note ioannis base64 is meant for encoding high-bit data into a form suitable for transmission under the 7bit rules. It has nothing to do with compression. If you want to compress a 64-byte string of 0's and 1's, use <b>pack </b>. <code> # The sender packs it my $p = pack 'b4' , $str ; # And the receiver unpacks it like this: print unpack 'b4', $p; </code> 555733 555733