Base94

A reversible translation of binary data to text with an alphabet between 2 and 94 symbols.

Description

This is a binary/text converter with any base between 2 and 94. It is probably a theoretical prototype and has a purely academic flavor, since the time and space complexities make it applicable only to small files (up to a few tens of kilobytes), although it allows one to choose any base with no dependencies on powers of two, e.g. 7 or 77. Visit https://vorakl.com/articles/base94/ for more details.

How to run

./base94.py <-e|-d> src dst [base=42]

For example:

./base94.py -e /bin/gethostip /tmp/gethostip.b94 94
./base94.py -e /bin/gethostip /tmp/gethostip.b42
./base94.py -d /tmp/gethostip.b42 /tmp/gethostip

There is also test.sh script that uses a small binary file /bin/gethostip for encoding/decoding and gathering different metrics. Simply run it with no arguments.