base32

Base32 encode/decode data and print to standard output.

Syntax
      base32 [OPTION]... [FILE]

Key
   -d
   --decode
        Decode data.

   -i
   --ignore-garbage
        When decoding, ignore non-alphabet characters.

   -w
   --wrap=COLS
        Wrap encoded lines after COLS character (default 76).  
        Use 0 to disable line wrapping.

   --help
        Display this help and exit.

   --version
        Output version information and exit.

With no FILE, or when FILE is - , read from standard input.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

The Base 32 encoding is designed to represent arbitrary sequences of octets in a form that needs to be case insensitive but that need not be human readable.

The base32 encoded data is about 60% larger than the raw data.

The data are encoded as described for the base64 alphabet in RFC 4648.
This uses an alphabet of A-Z, followed by 2-7.
0, 1, 8 and 9 are skipped due to the similarity with the letters O, I, B and G.

When fewer than 40 input bits are available in an input group, bits with value zero are added (on the right) to form an integral number of 5-bit groups. Padding at the end of the data is performed using the "=" character.

When decoding, the input may contain newlines in addition to the bytes of the formal base64 alphabet. Use --ignore-garbage to attempt to recover from any other non-alphabet bytes in the encoded stream.

Advantages of Base32:

1. The (smaller) output character set is case-insensitive.
2. Because the output character set avoids similar-looking pairs of different characters, like 1 and l, the output can be transcribed by hand with a low error rate.
3. The output is suitable for use as a URL string.

One disdvantage of Base32 is that the resulting string is about 20% longer than Base64.

base32 is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities) project.

Examples

Encode the text file sample.txt:

$ base32 sample.txt > encoded.txt

Encode a binary photo file:

$ base32 --wrap=0 picture.jpg > encoded.txt

Decode the file encoded.txt:

$ base32 encoded.txt > restore.txt

“The secret is that there is no secret.” ~ Lionel Shriver, (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

Related Linux commands

base64 - Base64 encode/decode data and print to standard output.
uuencode - Encode a binary file.
ASCII Table - (128 codes)