gb64

A high-performance, pure Perl implementation of Base64 encoding and decoding, compliant with RFC 4648.

Synopsis

use gb64 qw(enc_b64 dec_b64);

# Direct encoding/decoding
my $encoded = enc_b64("Hello World");  # Returns "SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ="
my $decoded = dec_b64($encoded);       # Returns "Hello World"

# Streaming encoding/decoding

my $gb64 = gb64->new;
$gb64->add("Hello ")->add("World");
$encoded = $gb64->encode;              # Returns "SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ="

Description

gb64 is a fast and lightweight Base64 encoding and decoding library in pure Perl, with no XS or C dependencies. It supports both one-shot encoding/decoding and streaming for large or incremental datasets. Optimized with unpack, pack, and array-based lookups, gb64 outperforms other pure Perl implementations like MIME::Base64::Perl by up to 97.7% for large inputs (110k bytes). The module is compliant with RFC 4648, includes robust error handling, and is compatible with Perl 5.8.8 and later.

Features

• Fast pure Perl implementation with no external dependencies
• Compliant with RFC 4648 Base64 specification
• Functional interface for one-shot encoding/decoding
• Object-oriented streaming interface for large datasets
• Robust error handling for invalid inputs
• Up to 97.7% faster than MIME::Base64::Perl for large inputs

Installation

To install from CPAN:

cpan gb64

Or manually:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

Dependencies

• Runtime: Core Perl modules (strict, warnings, Exporter)
• Testing: Test::More (>= 0.88), MIME::Base64

Testing

Run the test suite to verify functionality:

prove -v ./

The test suite includes functional, streaming, and error-handling tests, using MIME::Base64 as a reference implementation.

Performance

Benchmarks show gb64 achieves:

• Encoding: 26.4 iterations/second for large inputs (110k bytes)
• Decoding: 24.5 iterations/second for large inputs (110k bytes) Compared to MIME::Base64::Perl, gb64 is up to 97.7% faster for large inputs (26.4/s vs. 1051/s for encoding, 24.5/s vs. 1049/s for decoding). For small inputs (~5 bytes), performance is comparable for encoding but slightly slower for decoding (-28.0%) due to robust validation. See benchmark.pl in the repository for details.

Author

OnEhIppY, Domero Software domerosoftware@gmail.com (mailto:domerosoftware@gmail.com)

Copyright and License

Copyright (C) 2025 by OnEhIppY, Domero Software This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either:

• The GNU General Public License, version 1 or later
• The Artistic License included with Perl On Debian systems, see /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL for the GNU General Public License and /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic for the Artistic License.

Support

• Repository: https://github.com/DomeroSoftware/gb64
• Issues: https://github.com/DomeroSoftware/gb64/issues
• Email: domerosoftware@gmail.com (mailto:domerosoftware@gmail.com)

See Also

• RFC 4648 - The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings
• MIME::Base64 - A faster XS-based Base64 implementation
• MIME::Base64::Perl - Another pure Perl Base64 implementation