Why is base128 not used?

encoding language-agnostic binary
gmadar picture gmadar · May 15, 2011 · Viewed 65.2k times · Source

Why is only base64 instead of base128 used to transmit binary data on the web? The ASCII character set has 128 characters which in theory could represent base 128, but only base64 but not base128 is used in most cases.

Answer

pepoluan picture pepoluan · May 15, 2011

The problem is that at least 32 characters of the ASCII character set are 'control characters' which may be interpreted by the receiving terminal. E.g., there's the BEL (bell) character that makes the receiving terminal chime. There's the SOT (Start Of Transmission) and EOT (End Of Transmission) characters which performs exactly what their names imply. And don't forget the characters CR and LF, which may have special meanings in how data structures are serialized/flattened into a stream.

Adobe created the Base85 encoding to use more characters in the ASCII character set, but AFAIK it's protected by patents.

Related questions

How many bytes does one Unicode character take?

I am a bit confused about encodings. As far as I know old ASCII characters took one byte per character. How many bytes does a Unicode character require? I assume that one Unicode character can contain every possible character from …

Read More
Converting string to byte array in C#

I'm converting something from VB into C#. Having a problem with the syntax of this statement: if ((searchResult.Properties["user"].Count > 0)) { profile.User = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(searchResult.Properties["user"][0]); } I then see the following errors: Argument 1: cannot …

Read More
Java URL encoding of query string parameters

Say I have a URL http://example.com/query?q= and I have a query entered by the user such as: random word £500 bank $ I want the result to be a properly encoded URL: http://example.com/query?q=random%20…

Read More