BASENC(1)

💖 BASENC(1) — bestie's guide to encoding/decoding 💖

User Commands · the basenc page, but make it a group chat 🎀

---

✨ NAME ✨

basenc — encode/decode data and print to standard output 🦋

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

basenc [OPTION]... [FILE]

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so basenc encodes or decodes FILE, or standard input, straight to standard output. that's the whole vibe 💅

If there's no FILE, or when FILE is -, it reads standard input. classic.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. (yes bestie, that applies to you too 🫶)

• --base64 — literally the same as the base64(1) program (RFC4648 section 4) ✨
• --base64url — file- and url-safe base64 (RFC4648 section 5) 🔥
• --base58 — visually unambiguous base58 encoding 👑 (no confusing lookalike characters, we love that)
• --base32 — same as the base32(1) program (RFC4648 section 6) 🌸
• --base32hex — extended hex alphabet base32 (RFC4648 section 7) 🧚
• --base16 — hex encoding (RFC4648 section 8) ⭐
• --base2msbf — bit string with most significant bit (msb) first 🦋
• --base2lsbf — bit string with least significant bit (lsb) first 🦋
• -d, --decode — decode data 🙈
• -i, --ignore-garbage — when decoding, ignore non-alphabet characters 💀 (the "girl just skip it" flag)
• -w, --wrap=COLS — wrap encoded lines after COLS character (default 76). Use 0 to disable line wrapping 🎀
• --z85 — ascii85-like encoding (ZeroMQ spec:32/Z85); when encoding, input length must be a multiple of 4; when decoding, input length must be a multiple of 5 ⚠️ (the math is mathing, respect it)
• --help — display this help and exit 🫶
• --version — output version information and exit ✨

When decoding, the input may contain newlines in addition to the bytes of the formal alphabet. Use --ignore-garbage to attempt to recover from any other non-alphabet bytes in the encoded stream. 💖

---

🌈 ENCODING EXAMPLES 🌈

these are the examples, and honestly? iconic. keep them exactly like this, no cap:

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base64
/k+C

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base64url
_k-C

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base32
7ZHYE===

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base32hex
VP7O4===

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base16
FE4F82

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base2lsbf
011111111111001001000001

$ printf '\376\117\202' | basenc --base2msbf
111111100100111110000010

$ printf '\376\117\202\000' | basenc --z85
@.FaC

---

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Written by Simon Josefsson and Assaf Gordon. absolute legends, honestly 🙌

---

😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

• Report bugs to: <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
• Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>.
• GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
• General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

---

👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. fr fr, no warranty bestie 😭

---

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/basenc>
• or available locally via: info '(coreutils) basenc invocation'

---

and that's the page!! this one's from GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — go forth and encode, you absolute main character 💅✨