> Base64 encoding takes binary data and converts it into text, specifically ASCII text.
Perpetuates the idea that there's "binary" and "text", which is incorrect, but also implies you can't encode ordinary ASCII text into base64.
Perpetuates the idea that there's "binary" and "text", which is incorrect, but also implies you can't encode ordinary ASCII text into base64.
I understand what you mean, of course text can be represented and treated as binary, and the inverse often as well although it isn't necessarily true. Even in Windows-1252, where the upper 127 characters are in use, there are control characters such as null, delete, and EOT which I'd be impressed if a random chat program preserves them across the wire.
I also don't read an implication that ASCII couldn't be converted to b64
Well, there is binary, and there is text. Sure, all text - like "strawman" ;) - is binary somehow, but not all binary data is text, nor can be even interpreted as such, even if you tried really hard ... like all those poor hex editors.
I don't think it implies that at all.
Text isn't binary. Text can be encoded in binary, and there are different ways to do it. ASCII, UTF-8/16/32, latin-1, Shift-JIS, Windows-1252, etc. Many can't encode all text characters, especially languages that don't use the Latin alphabet.
The fact that you have to ensure you're using the correct encoding when processing text from a binary stream is proof enough that text isn't binary. Python before 3.x allowed you to treat binary and text as equal, and it often caused problems.