Converting Active Directory's Base64-Encoded UTF8 data to ISO-8859-1 inline

[bronto]

That's exactly it: I needed top retrieve some CNs from an Active Directory server, but one of them was encoded in Base64, since it contained an accented character. To decode it inline I quickly wrote this:

perl -MEncode -MMIME::Base64 -lpe 'Encode::from_to($_=decode_base64($_),"utf8","iso-8859-1")'

Just type in the string and press enter, it will return the decoded string in ISO-8859-1 format.

One could go further and write something just a bit more complicated:

perl -MEncode -MMIME::Base64 -lpe 'if (/::/) { ($attr,$_)=split ; Encode::from_to($_=decode_base64($_),"utf8","iso-8859-1") ; $_="$attr: $_" }'

that should work in the trivial cases (non-multiline-split attribute values). I used it this way:

ldapsearch -x -h 10.11.12.13 -p 3268 -b dc=ourdomain,dc=com -D a_dn_al
+lowed_to_search_and -w its_password '(manager=the_dn_of_our_boss)' cn
+ | perl -MEncode -MMIME::Base64 -lpe 'if (/::/) { ($attr,$_)=split ; 
+Encode::from_to($_=decode_base64($_),"utf8","iso-8859-1") ; $_="$attr
+: $_" }'

[Anonymous Monk]

Hey bronto, Very good ! I was in a migration from Netware Server, then my containers come with accent. So lost much time ... Rename my "accented" containers and Go! Thanks for your collaboration

[bronto]

My pleasure :) It's so sad I have so little time to hang around the monastery now... It's good to know that there are some of my old snippets that are still useful to someone!