Re: Best technique to code/decode binary data for inter-machine communication?

[zentara]

Is there something better than MIME::Base64?

Since we are just talking about making printable characters for transmission, you would want to shorten the length of the string, so how about using Math::BaseCnv to go from Base64 to Base128? Or use compression on the file, before doing the base conversion, with something like

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Compress::Zlib;
use MIME::Base64;
my $str = "Hello World! " x 3;
my $gzip = Compress::Zlib::memGzip( $str );
my $hex = unpack 'H*', $gzip;
my $base64 = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');

my $str_len = length($str);
my $gzip_len = length($gzip);
my $hex_len = length($hex);
my $base64_len  = length($base64);
# make binary printable ;-)
$gzip = '#' x $gzip_len;
printf "%3d: %s\n%3d: %s\n%3d: %s\n%3d: %s\n",
   $str_len, $str, $gzip_len, $gzip, $hex_len, $hex, $base64_len, $bas
+e64;

__DATA__
39: Hello World! Hello World! Hello World!
36: ####################################
72: 1f8b0800000000000003f348cdc9c95708cf2fca495154f0c0c90100b9a8ae3827
+000000
29: QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==