Fast base encoding / decoding of any given alphabet
(Hopefully temporary) fork of base-x library which removed node Buffer dependecy.
Fast base encoding / decoding of any given alphabet using bitcoin style leading
zero compression.
WARNING: This module is NOT RFC3548 compliant, it cannot be used for base16 (hex), base32, or base64 encoding in a standards compliant manner.
Base58
`` javascript
var BASE58 = '123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz'
var bs58 = require('@multiformats/base-x')(BASE58)
var decoded = bs58.decode('5Kd3NBUAdUnhyzenEwVLy9pBKxSwXvE9FMPyR4UKZvpe6E3AgLr')
console.log(decoded)
// =>
console.log(bs58.encode(decoded))
// => 5Kd3NBUAdUnhyzenEwVLy9pBKxSwXvE9FMPyR4UKZvpe6E3AgLr
`
See below for a list of commonly recognized alphabets, and their respective base.
Base | Alphabet
------------- | -------------
2 | 01
8 |
11 |
16 |
32 |
32 | (z-base-32)0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
36 |
58 |
62 |
64 |
66 |
It encodes octet arrays by doing long divisions on all significant digits in the
array, creating a representation of that number in the new base. Then for every
leading zero in the input (not significant as a number) it will encode as a
single leader character. This is the first in the alphabet and will decode as 8
bits. The other characters depend upon the base. For example, a base58 alphabet
packs roughly 5.858 bits per character.
This means the encoded string 000f (using a base16, 0-f alphabet) will actually decode
to 4 bytes unlike a canonical hex encoding which uniformly packs 4 bits into each
character.
While unusual, this does mean that no padding is required and it works for bases
like 43.