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Can any file and its data be converted to a String or plaintext?

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cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I’ve noticed some files I opened in a text editor have all kinds of crazy unrenderable chars

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cheese_greater@lemmy.worldOP
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But its still contains the actual data in a faithfully reproducible/useable way?

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vithigar@lemmy.ca
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Yes. Decoding a base64 encoded string will give you back the exact original data.

Importantly though, this isn’t what you’re seeing when you open files in a text editor as you describe in your original post, and if you copied the text of those files and saved a new copy it’s very likely that it would not reproduce correctly.

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leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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yes, this method doesn’t lose any bits. one of its primary use before was email which was strictly text only.

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