This module performs base64 encoding and decoding of arbitrary binary strings into text strings that can be safely emailed or posted. The encoding scheme is defined in RFC 1421 (``Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail: Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication Procedures'', section 4.3.2.4, ``Step 4: Printable Encoding'') and is used for MIME email and various other Internet-related applications; it is not the same as the output produced by the uuencode program. For example, the string 'www.python.org' is encoded as the string 'd3d3LnB5dGhvbi5vcmc=\n'.
See Also:
Module binascii (support module containing ASCII-to-binary and binary-to-ASCII conversions)