Obviously a better solution than my backticks and base64 system command. A quick Google turned up Mime::Base64 for base64 in Perl, I did *not* go a step further to see if it was in core and I knew it would not be CPAN module I had downloaded so didn't even try, assumed I didn't have it and rolled something quick.

Thanks for the tip! Next time I'll check 'corelist' before backtick-ing out.