Ascii85 (Base85) decoder
Paste Ascii85 data from a PDF, PostScript file or anywhere else to see what it holds.
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Processing and privacy: The result is calculated inside your browser and your data is not sent to any server.
How to use it
- Enter encoded text.
- The result appears straight away and updates as you edit.
- Copy the result, or copy a link that keeps the same values to share it.
How it is calculated
Subtract 33 from each of 5 characters to get base-85 digits, combine them into a 32-bit number and write 4 bytes. z means 4 zero bytes; a short final group is padded with u and yields one byte fewer than its character count.
Example
Result: Decoded text: Man is distinguished; Bytes: 20.
<~9jqo^BlbD-BleB1DJ+*+F(f,q~>
Man is distinguished
Limits and caveats
- Adobe/btoa flavour only; Z85 and Git Base85 use other alphabets.
- Compressed PDF streams show as bytes only; FlateDecode is not unpacked.
Questions about this tool
Do I need the <~ and ~> markers?
No. They are removed when present and the input works without them.
Why does uuuuu give an error?
Its base-85 value is larger than a 32-bit number can hold, so no valid encoder could have produced it.
Do spaces and line breaks matter?
No. All whitespace is ignored, as the Adobe specification requires.