Using “basenc”

author: Nathan Acks
date: 2022-03-02

# Encode $STRING to base64.
#
echo "$STRING" | basenc --base64

# Encode $STRING to URL-safe base64.
#
echo "$STRING" | basenc --base64url

# Dencode $BASE64_STRING from base64.
#
echo "$BASE64_STRING" | basenc -d --base64

# Dencode $BASE64_STRING from URL-safe base64.
#
echo "$BASE64_STRING" | basenc -d --base64url

The advantage of basenc over base64 is that basenc supports URL-safe base64-encoding/decoding out of the box, which I’ve otherwise found is a pain to work with.