Binary-to-text encoding

A binary to text encoding is an encoding of data in plain text. More precisely, it is an encoding of data in a sequence of ASCII printable characters. These encodings are necessary for transmission of data when the channel or the protocol only allows ASCII printable characters.

Binary to text encoding is common in email and USENET communication. The most used forms of binary to text encodings are:

• base64
• uuencoding
• quoted-printable
• BinHex
• Ascii85
• yEnc
• xxencoding
• Radix-64
• percent encoding

Most of these encodings generate text not containing all ASCII printable characters: for example, the base64 encoding generates text that only contains upper case and lower case letters, (A–Z, a–z), numerals (0–9), and the "+", "/", and "=" symbols.