sub old_encode_base64 ($;$)
{
    my $res = "";
    my $eol = $_[1];
    $eol = "\n" unless defined $eol;
    pos($_[0]) = 0;                          # ensure start at the beginning

    $res = join '', map( pack('u',$_)=~ /^.(\S*)/, ($_[0]=~/(.{1,45})/gs));

    $res =~ tr|` -_|AA-Za-z0-9+/|;               # `# help emacs
    # fix padding at the end
    my $padding = (3 - length($_[0]) % 3) % 3;
    $res =~ s/.{$padding}$/'=' x $padding/e if $padding;
    # break encoded string into lines of no more than 76 characters each
    if (length $eol) {
        $res =~ s/(.{1,76})/$1$eol/g;
    }
    return $res;
}