(tye)Re2: Compact MD5 representation

OK, I'm (relatively) lazy. Looking at the source code for one Perl MD5 implementation, I see that the base64 output consists of A-Za-z0-9+/. Where does "=" come in? Why do you need to use 65 different characters?

- tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

Comment on (tye)Re2: Compact MD5 representation

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Re: (tye)Re2: Compact MD5 representation by chipmunk (Parson) on Mar 21, 2001 at 01:06 UTC
According to the docs for Mime::Base64, '=' is used to pad a Base64 encoded string to a multiple of four bytes. For MD5 hashes, they're always a multiple of four bytes anyway, so the '=' isn't needed. This is definitely good to know!	[reply]


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