# MIME::Decoder::Base64

This module is ALPHA code, which means that public interfaces are largely untested, and may change in future releases. Use with caution! Please report any errors back to eryq@zeegee.com as soon as you can.

- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- AUTHOR
- VERSION

## NAME

MIME::Decoder::Base64 - encode/decode a "base64" stream

## SYNOPSIS

A generic decoder object; see MIME::Decoder for usage.

## DESCRIPTION

A MIME::Decoder subclass for the `"base64"` encoding. The name was chosen to jibe with the pre-existing MIME::Base64 utility package, which this class actually uses to translate each chunk.

- When decoding, the input is read one line at a time. The input accumulates in an internal buffer, which is decoded in multiple-of-4-sized chunks (plus a possible "leftover" input chunk, of course).

- When encoding, the input is read 45 bytes at a time: this ensures that the output lines are not too long. We chose 45 since it is a multiple of 3 and produces lines under 76 characters, as RFC-1521 specifies.

## AUTHOR

Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).

All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

## VERSION

$Revision: 5.203 $ $Date: 2000/06/10 06:38:04 $