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14 Nov

Base64 decode to file

Useful if you’ve just received an email that says it has attachments but you can’t get them out (as I just did!). View the raw source of the email, copy the Base64 encoded text, drop in to a file, and run through this. The output will be the binary (or ascii) attachment.

perl -MMIME::Base64 -ne 'print decode_base64($_)' < file.txt > out

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One Response to “Base64 decode to file”

Dan Jones March 3rd, 2012 at 11:52 pm

I was looking for how to do this, and then, after I read your post, I realized I had already learned a simpler way.
On Linux, the coreutils package comes with a program called simply “base64″
To use it in the same way you described, just do this:
base64 -d file.txt > out
A lot quicker to type, and easier to remember.

Just thought you’d like to know!