Description

Compress/Decompress, Encode and Decode any file to a z85 string. Useful to store binaries in text format, for NFC cards/stickers/keychains or anywhere you want.

Build

cargo build --release

Usage

Both commands read from <file> when given and from stdin otherwise, and write to stdout unless -o is set.

# Encode a file to z85 (stdout)
byteme encode raw.txt

# Encode and save to file
byteme encode raw.txt -o encoded.txt

# Pipe into encode
cat myimage.png | byteme encode -o encoded.txt

# Decode from file
byteme decode encoded.txt

# Decode and save to file
byteme decode encoded.txt -o raw.txt

# Pipe into decode
echo 'C?JLE:sHu(Qc%Y#!z.8[04z%)###00' | byteme decode

# Pipe into decode and save to file
echo 'C?JLE:sHu(Qc%Y#!z.8[04z%)###00' | byteme decode -o raw.txt

Whitespace in the encoded text is ignored when decoding, so Windows (CRLF) line endings, trailing spaces and text that was hard-wrapped by an editor or a chat app all decode fine.

If decoding fails, the output file is left untouched.

Options

-o, --output <path>   Write to file instead of stdout
-h, --help            Show help message

Docker

The image's entrypoint is the binary, so arguments go straight after the image name. Use -i to pipe through stdin.

echo 'C?JLE:sHu(Qc%Y#!z.8[04z%)###00' | docker run --rm -i <dockerhub-user>/byteme decode

Library

The crate also exposes the transformation as a library.

let text = byteme::encode(b"This is a test\n")?;
let bytes = byteme::decode(&text)?;

assert_eq!(bytes, b"This is a test\n");

Errors are a typed byteme::Error (Compress, Z85, Decompress), so callers can tell bad text apart from corrupted data.

Encryption

Encrypt a file using gpg and process with byteme

# Interactive mode
gpg -c --no-symkey-cache raw.txt
# Non-interactive mode
gpg --batch --passphrase 'somepass' -c raw.txt

Now run the steps above but using <filename>.gpg instead.

Decryption

gpg -d raw.txt.gpg

Development

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features --locked -- -D warnings
cargo test --locked

imports_granularity and group_imports in .rustfmt.toml are nightly-only. Stable cargo fmt ignores them with a warning; run cargo +nightly fmt to apply them.