base64-encoding-region does not work on multibyte character

base64-encoding-region does not work on multibyte character

[Moses]

Hi all,

I get error "Multibyte character in data for base64 encoding" when I
try to base64 encoding some utf-8 text. I would like to know is there
an easy way to encode and decode base64 in Emacs?

Thanks

Re: base64-encoding-region does not work on multibyte character

[Stefan Monnier]

> I get error "Multibyte character in data for base64 encoding" when I
> try to base64 encoding some utf-8 text.

base64 is an encoding which applies to *bytes*, not chars.  So you first
need to encode your sequence of chars into a sequence of bytes using
some coding-system.  I.e. apply `encode-coding-string/region'.
And after that, you can use base64-encode-string/region.


        Stefan

Re: base64-encoding-region does not work on multibyte character

[Moses]

Ok, it is not as convenient as in Notepad++, but it works.

Thanks.

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> I get error "Multibyte character in data for base64 encoding" when I
>> try to base64 encoding some utf-8 text.
>
> base64 is an encoding which applies to *bytes*, not chars.  So you first
> need to encode your sequence of chars into a sequence of bytes using
> some coding-system.  I.e. apply `encode-coding-string/region'.
> And after that, you can use base64-encode-string/region.
>
>
>        Stefan