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Base32 encoding proposal

11/26/2012

1 Comment

 
Base64 is a popular data encoding used to represent binary data as a sequence of ASCII characters. What is less popular is the Base32 encoding because it is generates a less compact encoding.

However, Base32 encoding has the benefit to provide an encoding that is easy to handle "manually" by humans. I suggest to use Base32 encoding to provide a compact identifier encoding that users have to remember and may have to spell out to other people.

It is for this reason that I would prefer to use such Base32 encoding for the user identifiers key of a web service.

With 4 Base32 ASCII code value one can encode one number in a million. With 5 Base32 ASCII code, we can encode one value in 32 million and with 6 Base32 ASCII code we can encode one value in a billion. I can't wait for my users to have 5 or even 6 ASCII codes in their identifiers.

My proposed encoding is the same as the Crockford's Base32 alphabet with the difference that the letter U is preserved and the letter W is removed. I guess the letter U has been removed to avoid confusions with two 1 in sequence. But I find that removing the W is preferable because it is less convenient to memorize and spell out.

Note: with a Base64 encoding, only 5 Base64 ASCII codes a needed for one number in a billion, but the complexity to remember, spell out and distinguish upper and lower case letters makes it inefficient.
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    Christophe Meessen is a  computer science engineer working in France.

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