Ascii85

File Format
Name	Ascii85
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Transfer Encodings Ascii85

Ascii85, or Base85, is a binary-to-text encoding. It is similar in concept to Base64 and Uuencode. It is often used in PDF and PostScript files, and rarely anywhere else. There are several varieties of it.

Identification

Generic Ascii85 data often has a "<~" prefix, and a "~>" suffix, but this is not universal. Evidently, in PDF and PostScript, only the suffix is usually present.

There is also a uuencoding-like format, delimited by lines that begin with "xbtoa Begin" and "xbtoa End".

Software

• ascii85.tgz
• btoa-5.2.tar.gz
• Ascii85 libraries are readily available for most popular programming languages.

Links

• Wikipedia article
• Online ASCII85 encoder
• Online ASCII85 decoder
• RFC 1924: A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses